Can gasoline engines be greener than EVs?

If you want a gasoline engine that is greener than a fully electric vehicle, you’ll have to buy a car that’s a lot more fuel efficient than the one you’re probably driving now.

A new study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found that gaspowered vehicles need to average 55.4 miles per gallon in the U.S. or 51.5 mpg worldwide to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a batteryelectric vehicle. In Canada and France, the numbers would be even higher, 169.5 mpg and 524.6 mpg, respectively.

The disparity depends on what is used to make the electricity that charges a battery. In countries where coal or oil is king, generating electricity for a full charge creates more carbon dioxide emissions than in places where hydroelectric power, for example, is the main source.

In weighing the impact, the researchers, Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle, also considered the effect of extracting and transporting the raw materials for either electricity or gasoline production. The study looked at only fully electric vehicles, which are known as battery electric vehicles, — not plug-in electric hybrids — versus gas-powered cars.

“The reasons for conducting such a country-by-country comparison are that the indirect emissions from [battery-electric vehicles] depend on the mix of fuel sources used to generate electricity and countries differ widely in their fuel-source mix,” Sivak said in a statement.

Sivak and Schoettle reviewed data for 143 countries garnered from the Union of Concerned Scientists and the International Energy Agency.