Will electric vehicles reduce pollution? Data driven thinking in the Indian context
This article is not from my area of expertise but from my area of interest. To clear the context for my readers, I am not trying to calculate the carbon footprint from the production of IC engine vehicles or their electric counterparts. I am just trying to understand if using electric cars will reduce pollution in my country. For ease of comparison, I will use Nexon EV and its IC engine counterpart which uses petrol as fuel. Electric vehicles, similar to your mobile phones run on electricity stored in batteries. If they have to be clean, then it is very important that the source of your electricity is clean. The current pool of grid electricity in India consists predominantly of electricity produced from coal-fired power plants. According to sources from the ministry of power website, out of the installed capacity in India, 58.5% of installed power generation capacity is fossil fuel-based (of which coal-based power plants alone contributes to 50.7% of the total installed cap...