In the autumn of 2026, a debate long simmering beneath Europe's green transition broke into the open: are electric vehicles truly cleaner, or does the environmental cost of making them quietly erase their promise? A technical report from Munich, backed by major automakers, claimed the gains were modest — 41 percent at best. But the broader body of independent research, drawing on full lifecycle analyses, told a different story: battery-electric vehicles emit between 60 and 78 percent less than their gasoline counterparts over their entire lives, and that advantage is set to grow as grids decar