So much misinformation in this thread already (as I suspected would be the case).
OK, I wrote a report on this for my masters, so let's get a few of them out of the way (and add a few more in).
EV's are not as green as ICE cars in reality
A now long-debunked myth, even with current battery technology, EV's across their whole life produce less CO2 than ICE cars. Even if all the electricity used to power them came from coal-fired power-plants they would produce (across whole life) the same level of CO2 as a 50mpg petrol car (have a quick guess how many of those exist in reality). As soon as you look at cleaner sources of electrical generation the gains start to increase massively, and this is without true large-scale production of EV's (which will again drop this rate far more).
Regardless of which emission type you look at, across the whole life EV's are cleaner than any of the alternates (and yes that does include Hydrogen Fuel Cells - I will come to this one later).
EV's are bad because they can't be recycled.
Again not true, now aside from the fact that the number of components that need to be recycled is massively reduced in an EV, particularly they fluids. People forget that EV's consume a lot of oil across their lives, this oil can only be recycled into one thing (and doing so produces a lot of CO2 and NOx), low-grade diesel and marine fuel, which produces even more CO2 and NOx!
The key target for recyclability is the battery cells, up to which 80% of them can be recycled (and legally in many markets at least 50% has to be). However that's actually further down the line, as most battery's, on reaching the end of life for use in an EV can be used in battery farms, as they require a different level of capacity, recharge rate, etc.
As a result, EV's are at least as recyclable as ICE vehicles, and in many cases, more so.
Charging and all things related
Charging infrastructure? What if I told you that the UK, right now, has more public EV charging outlets than it does fuel station locations in the UK (circa 9,000 vs 20,000), with roughly 500 a month being added to that number. IN the UK they are looking to mandate all new houses having charge points, most car-parks already have a number (and adding them is cheap and easy), workplaces are adding them, and a rapidly growing number of ones being added to lamposts (the quickest and easiest way to increase the number of charge points are on almost every street).
The infrastructure to add these already exists within the majority of countries in the world, electric distribution is the norm and contrary to myth, is up to the task, mainly because capacitors exist! Nor does everyone coming home on an evening and plugging in cause a problem, in fact, it's actually a potential advantage. Let me explain, first you need to understand that EVs have smart charging, you tell them when you need it charged by and it will work out the start, end and charge duration, smoothing out the demand it creates as much as possible (your smartphone also does this - which is why it's now harder to kill smart-phone batteries), then we look at 24-hour electric demand, currently, it has massive peaks in the morning and evening, with the lowest demand at night and the daytime being a mid-point. This is actually a pain for grids, as they have to cycle production up and down over the course of the 24-hour cycle. This is actually rather expensive for them (to the point of bringing stations on and off line), so with smart-charging and more use of the stations overnight, it actually smooths out the demand and makes electricity, overall, cheaper to produce.
Now range anxiety does exist and is a real thing, but this is no different than our ancestors dealt with in the early days of ICE vehicles, and for the vast majority (80%+) of people will rarely be an issue, as they do less than 30 miles a day in total (well below the range of even the lowest range EV). Rapid charging is also getting significantly more rapid, bringing the quickest currently to around 30 minutes, however, 10 and 5 minute charges are
not far away at all.
Then you have the option being used by a growing number of companies (mainly in the far east) for HGV EV's, which is the ability to swap out battery-pack entirely. The driver parks up at a station, and they simply swap out the entire powerpack for a freshly charged one. The basis of this idea already exists for electric motorbikes and scooters, take the battery out and charge it in your home or workplace. Oh and some dirt-cheap electric bikes look really quite good in my view...
..the Super SOCO TC Max, 80 mile range, charge it in your house and its four grand new!
But what about Hydrogen?
Hydrogen may end up being viable, but it's a long way behind pure EV's. Absolutely no network for HFC's exists in any realistic way (13 exist in the UK, most are not well located (being experimental a number are on university campuses) and one will be closing with the loss of Honda Manufacturing UK later this year), and unlike EV charging would need to be built from the ground up. The production of hydrogen is also incredibly environmentally unsound right now, using coal or natural gas to make it, and it's a difficult process that is not particularly energy-efficient. It's also not particularly efficient as a process along the chain of use, you have to use a lot of electricity to produce the hydrogen, you then have to transport it to the fuel stations (via vehicle), put it in the car, which then turns it back into electricity, puts it in a battery pack (yes HFC still need these) and then power the car! Why not just take the electricity and use it to power the car, you know, as a pure EV does.
Now some people champion converting ICE vehicles to run on hydrogen, however that has a few more disadvantages on top of the ones covered above for the production and transportation of hydrogen, the main one being that it's not actually a zero-emissions fuel used in this manner. To get close to zero emissions the ICE engine has to be run incredibly lean, resulting in at least a 50% reduction in power, run it any richer than that and you start to burn the most common element in air at higher and higher rates, resulting in a massive amount of NOx being realised. Opps, that doesn't work, now you can get around this by burning it with pure oxygen, but you now have the issue of needing to store both compressed hydrogen and oxygen in the vehicle, so say goodbye to any storage capacity and hello to a massive risk, oh and buying two fuels rather than one.
Speaking of buying fuel, hydrogen also currently costs (mile for mile) four times the amount petrol does in the UK, and that's with government subsidies included.
Let's use biofuel then!
While you can produce biofuel in a carbon neutral manner, it has the side effect of producing more NOx emissions than diesel does, so lets not.
EV still has a long way to go, but in comparison to the alternatives, they are without a doubt the cleanest and most sustainable option right now and will continue to improve in that regard at a rapid rate. The above is a quick rebuttal to the many myths taledk about them, and I'm quite sure I've missed a few, so will add them back in, as and when I can.
