They may not be gas-guzzlers, but electric cars have a raging thirst for water. A comparison of the volume of coolant water used in the thermoelectric power plants that provide most of our electricity and that used in extracting and refining petroleum suggests that electric vehicles require significantly more water per mile than those powered by gasoline. The findings could bode ill for drought stricken areas in the event of a large scale switch to plug-in vehicles. ‘I wouldn’t sound the alarm that this is going to ruin the day,’ says Carey King from the University of Texas, Austin, US, noting that no mass-market electric vehicle is currently available. ‘But looking into the future, this is something we should take into account.’ Dry cooling King and colleagues found that cars, light trucks, and SUVs running off the electric grid consume three times more water and withdraw 17 times more water per mile than their equivalent gasoline-powered vehicles. For electricity generation, ‘consumed’ water is the amount of water lost to evaporation whereas ‘withdrawn’ water is the amount of surface water a power plant uses and later returns to its source, typically a nearby lake or river. […]