DETROIT – Electric vehicles have often been hailed as the future. Major motoring companies are aiming to produce nothing but electric vehicles in the future, and some aspire to hit that target by the end of the decade. Cars that are traditionally seen as so-called gas guzzlers — like pickup trucks, muscle cars, and hummers — all have electric equivalents.

Governments, including the one running the United States, are improving infrastructure, offering tax incentives, and enacting policies aimed at getting more electric vehicles on the road. And modern-day industrial icons like Elon Musk, who obviously has a vested interest in the electric car’s success, constantly promote the concept. Musk recently published a tweet that likened internal combustion engines to the steam engine — an archaic method of producing mechanical power.

Although some alternatives are available, electric cars are by far the most practical carbon-neutral methods of personal transport as things stand. Over its lifetime, an electric car will have significantly less impact on the environment than its gasoline equivalent. But EVs aren’t exactly green from the get-go. At the moment they roll off the production line, that carbon-neutral electric car has actually contributed more to climate change than a gas-powered vehicle that could be produced in the same factory. Depending on where you live, this deficit can also take a while to overturn.

Despite their surging popularity, electric vehicles still have many detractors. One statement those detractors like to make involves the actual source of the energy electric vehicles use to get around. The outlet you’re plugging your EV into isn’t producing any power, it’s just supplying it. Where the electricity charging your batteries comes from is different, depending on where you live. If you live in Iceland, you have the right to be a bit smug from an environmental perspective. The Icelandic government claims that almost all of the power the country uses comes from renewable sources. Geothermal power, which is quite easy to tap into on the highly volcanic island, makes up the majority of that.

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