According scientific data analysed in a report by the nature.com website which details that if governments accelerated the switch from conventional cars to electric vehicles it could help reduce the temperature in cities and urban environments by as much as 1 degree.

The reason for this is because when in use electric cars emit less heat than conventional cars (CVs). One example cited is that an electric car doesn’t build up any heat in a traffic jam compared to CVs, which obviously do.

This could have one or two knock on effects, the reduced temperature could mean that people use less electricity from sources such as air-conditioning units. That in turn reduces pollution which is emitted when more energy is used.

Researchers imagine that if the City of Beijing in China had switched to electric cars in the summer of 2012 it would have seen a reduction in the use of air-conditioning related carbon dioxide emissions/day by 14.44 million kilowatt-hours (kWh), and reduced daily CO₂ emissions by 10,686 tonnes.

The report says as of December 2013 there are over 405,000 electric vehicles in use worldwide. The debate is whether to make cities switch to electric cars. However there is a small irony about the electric car debate.

While great strides have been made into making electric cars work for everyday owners they actually use more energy and cause more pollution during the manufacturing process in comparison to conventional cars.

Then these electric cars will have to be recharged which again uses more energy from the national grid which in turn means more fossil fuel is being burnt to supply that energy therefore causing more pollution.

There will be a time when large cities across the world adopt the wholesale use of electric cars, eventually fossil fuels will run out.

For the moment this reporter will go down to his local Mercedes dealer and place an order for a big dirty V8. May as well live it up and let the next generation pay for our greed and mistakes.