No, electric vehicles are the best option in nearly all cases. Natural gas makes Boston electricity one of the cleaner grids in the country. For my zip, a LR Model 3 makes 131 MPG[1] per unit of CO2, while manufacturing produces ~5 tonnes more CO2 (an SR will be ~3.5 tonnes)[2].
That's a break even period of only 15,000 miles. Unless your gas car will be tossed away in under 15,000 miles you are adding more CO2 to the air- and that's assuming you actually make 29 mpg, which is not likely on a car that is only 15k miles from EOL. Even if you don't touch the car for years, if you eventually sell the car the next owners are practically guaranteed to drive that many miles. The average American drives that far in 13 months.
Of course the money you spend on a new electric car might be better spent elsewhere, but in any state with a moderately clean grid, replacing a gas car with an electric car is a clear winning choice. Even on the very dirtiest grids in the US a Model 3 produces half as much CO2 as a gas car making 30 mpg- even slightly less than a Prius. The payback time is still only ~30k-35k miles, and in all likelihood owners will put several times that on the car.
That's interesting. The last time I did the math it looked like the breakeven point would be well over a decade for me (approx 4000 driven miles per year). It may be that things have changed since.
Another often-missed factor that may shift the ethical breakeven point is that local air pollution is _really_ bad from a public health perspective, to a degree that's criminally underemphasized. If you're going to be burning fossil fuels for power, doing so in a centralized place away from dense populations makes a lot more sense than doing so next to schools, parks, residential density, etc.
Another fun fact is that, in my lifetime, Massachusetts will be a very green-energy grid. We are building a transmission line through Maine to connect to a Quebec hydro plant, and offshore wind is growing fast (though it all takes time). A Tesla I buy today will probably be carbon-free in its lifetime!
That's a break even period of only 15,000 miles. Unless your gas car will be tossed away in under 15,000 miles you are adding more CO2 to the air- and that's assuming you actually make 29 mpg, which is not likely on a car that is only 15k miles from EOL. Even if you don't touch the car for years, if you eventually sell the car the next owners are practically guaranteed to drive that many miles. The average American drives that far in 13 months.
Of course the money you spend on a new electric car might be better spent elsewhere, but in any state with a moderately clean grid, replacing a gas car with an electric car is a clear winning choice. Even on the very dirtiest grids in the US a Model 3 produces half as much CO2 as a gas car making 30 mpg- even slightly less than a Prius. The payback time is still only ~30k-35k miles, and in all likelihood owners will put several times that on the car.
[1]: https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/ev-e...
[2]: https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl...