The answer is it depends.
This question has been on my mind for some time given the proliferation of electric and hybrid vehicles, such as the Tesla Roadster or the Toyota Prius. Iām talking about ecological and not economic, where it seems that electric vehicles already win the battle. Otherwise, why do you think there are so many taxi drivers using the unaesthetic Toyota Prius in your city?
In the March IEEE Spectrum magazine they dedicated an article quite extensive to this topic. They evaluated the emissions of a traditional combustion vehicle, with the emissions of producing the electricity necessary to travel the same distance with an electric car. For example, in the case of France, an electric car is more ecological, since a large part of the electrical energy comes from nuclear power plants, however, in China, about 4/5 of the energy is obtained from energy-inefficient thermal power plants with respect to the emissions they produce, and a classic car is more environmentally friendly.
In the case of Spain we have approximately equal pollution for one type of vehicle or another, although this trend is shifting towards cars powered by electricity due to the growing use of renewable energy and increasingly efficient power plants.