Ethan Elkind and Steven Weissman quoted in The Daily Californian, September 9, 2012
“Electric vehicles are important to our environmental concerns, public health, quality of life and national security,” said Ethan Elkind…. “They are important to the economy because you would have a domestic source of fuel instead of having to import foreign oil.”
The magnitude of environmental benefits is not the same in all states because it depends on which energy source is used to generate electricity. In states like West Virginia, electricity is produced by coal as opposed to cleaner energies used in California, said Weissman.