Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret

Bjorn Lomborg: Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret - WSJ.com:
"When an electric car rolls off the production line, it has already been responsible for 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The amount for making a conventional car: 14,000 pounds."....But remember, the production of the electric car has already resulted in sizeable emissions—the equivalent of 80,000 miles of travel in the vehicle.So unless the electric car is driven a lot, it will never get ahead environmentally. 
And that turns out to be a challenge.
 Consider the Nissan Leaf. It has only a 73-mile range per charge. Drivers attempting long road trips, as in one BBC test drive, have reported that recharging takes so long that the average speed is close to six miles per hour—a bit faster than your average jogger.To make matters worse, the batteries in electric cars fade with time, just as they do in a cellphone. Nissan estimates that after five years, the less effective batteries in a typical Leaf bring the range down to 55 miles. 
As the MIT Technology Review cautioned last year: "Don't Drive Your Nissan Leaf Too Much."