Not so green: Dirty batteries belie electric cars' environmental promise

While electric cars are emission-free on the road, they still discharge a lot of the carbon-dioxide that conventional cars do

Beneath the hoods of millions of the clean electric cars rolling onto the world’s roads in the next few years will be a dirty battery.

Every major carmaker has plans for electric vehicles to cut greenhouse gas emissions, yet their manufacturers are, by and large, making lithium-ion batteries in places with some of the most polluting grids in the world.

By 2021, capacity will exist to build batteries for more than 10 million cars running on 60 kilowatt-hour packs, according to data of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Most supply will come from places like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland that