If the electricity used to power EV's is from sustainable sources. If not dubious how much of a benefit we gain.
.... that is produced by sustainable green sources. Coal or gas fired produced electricity is not that. Or for that matter vehicle components produced by such.
No, regardless of where the electricity comes from (yes, green power is much better than oil, gas or coal), EVs don't produce exhaust pollution (diesel particles or carbon dioxide).
What needs to be considered is cradle to grave usage. Including necessary support infrastructure. The reason evs are so damn expensive is not because the people making them are mean, it is because they use more rare, more expensive materials than a regular vehicle. These require extra resources to acquire and dispose of. Ever see a photo of a lithium mine? Copper, cobalt, lithium, niodynium, etc. Those elements don't just pop out of the ground for free in a refined state. It requires significantly more resource input to make an EV. Then you wind up with a heavier vehicle that has shorter range. You use extra energy and do extra road damage. And it has a shorter lifetime too. The truth is that if EVs were actually better, for-profit trucking companies would be buying them WITHOUT mandates. The notional that we have or will have a bunch of extra clean electrical grid power laying around at any point soon is also delusional nonsense. If we had extra green electricity, we'd be asking people to switch to electric heat. Think about a corner gas station. All it really needs is a few tanks and some small pumps, and it can service thousands of vehicles a day, which only need to be refilled roughly once a week. An EV charging station needs a huge electrical feed, huge transformers, can service many fewer vehicles per day AND those vehicles need to be serviced more often. That means more driving to charging stations, and more stations needed.
You said "It's hard to beat zero emissions." No tailpipe I get it. But that is only half, actually less than half, of the prooooooooblem. And if anything it disguises the problem. Makes tree-hugger all warm and fuzzy. Well at least the ones who feed their grey matter protein strictly obtained from that blue green algae stuff. Most clued-in envirnomentalists understand carbon-based powerplants and livestock production is where the real gains will be made. Not how we transport ourselves and our freight.
It's not an either/or effort. Certainly, replacing oil/coal/gas with sustainable energy and battery storage is an achievable goal. Limiting livestock production is a tough cookie to break. I was supportive of lab based meats for mass consumption meats like burgers and such, but it seems to be failing. Efforts need to be made to reduce meat demand and improve standards to reduce supply. Taking millions of tail pipe emissions off the roads will have a tremendous positive impact on human health in urban environments.
Didn't I already answer your points? If you just want to pontificate it's fine, but I suggest you make the effort to read up on the subject. The article below makes it easy to read, but there are a number of in depth research papers that have come out with similar conclusions. https://elements.visualcapitalist.c...E.&text=EVs are approx 9 times more efficient.