A new study has found electric vehicles are better for the environment than petrol or diesel powered vehicles, even taking into account the environmental impact of building them in the first place.
The study was commissioned by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority.
Many environmental studies focus only on the effect of running an electric vehicle and ignore such impacts as extracting metals and using energy to manufacture them.
The new research finds electric vehicles have 60 percent fewer CO2 emissions than petrol vehicles across their entire life cycle.
The Authority says the research dispels two urban myths: one that electric cars use too many rare earths and the other that they deplete lithium, which the report says is neither a rare earth nor even a precious metal.