We don’t even need to think long term—EVs (even charged with fossil power) are already cleaner than gas cars in most cases:

https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-numbers-are-in-an...

And—to your point—they get cleaner every year.

I like the union of concerned scientists, but the study that they cite on this is hot garbage, and they should be ashamed.

https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life...

a few quotes from the pdf

"For this analysis we expected the midsize and full-size BEV to need only one lithium-ion battery pack over its lifetime." of 179,000 miles

"Excluded from the life cycle assessments are the global warming emissions from building the infrastructure (such as factories and industrial equipment) required to do all of the processing and assembling, and the emissions from transportation of raw materials for manufacturing."

"we had limited data on the actual composition of the vehicle models"

"Comparing our results with other battery literature(. . .), the emissions (kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of battery weight) depend on the battery chemistry. These estimates are on the lower end of the spectrum for battery-production global warming emissions because they derive from process-level analyses. The alternative approach—top-down methods, which refer to how the battery production energy is assessed— results in higher estimates because the scope of the assessment is large"

and especially relevant to your point and the article you linked, which reads, "the extra emissions from making an 80-mile range EV (compared to a similar gasoline car) are about 15% higher"

from quoted report "for this study we assumed a lifetime of 179,000 miles, both for gasoline and long-range battery-electric vehicles, based on the National Household Travel Survey (FHWA 2009) data for the first 15 years of a vehicle’s lifetime. However, we posited an exception for the 84-mile-range BEV and comparable gasoline car—that total mileage would be 135,000—75 percent of the mileage of the 265-mile-range BEV. This difference is due to “range limitations” of a car with a more modest-sized battery: its driver would likely be unwilling to drive long distances very often, given the frequent need for stopping to “fill up” "

And then there is the whole mystery meat of the supply chain that produce all of the components, which don't seemed to be very shrewdly represented if at all. There is a lot more CO2 produced than just extraction>refinement. I'm really not confident in scientists ability to gauge the resource consumption of industry.

Cars generally charge overnight when solar is no longer available.

That's not a major problem long-term IMO. Solar power can be stored at home or at grid-level, charging can be scheduled to coincide with daylight hours before/after work, EV batteries are getting bigger every year so they need to be charged less often (which means more flexibility with what time they're charged), overnight also coincides with low-consumption hours for the grid which has its own benefits, V2G and V2V even allow parked electric cars to potentially become solar storage batteries for a smart grid and other neat things in the more distant future.

This is just a round about way of accomplishing the same goal. There are much better clean energy investments that will have payoff sooner and will benefit more people, not just those than can shell out tens of thousands of dollars for roof solar and a power pack.

It's expensive right now because demand is low. When everyone is buying solar, I'm sure the price will drop even further. This could still happen in parallel with any other clean energy investments as well.

There aren't that many clean energy options available to the end consumer right now, other than solar. You could have a wind turbine which could run day/night, but they're just not as cheap per watt, and has far fewer competitors on the market making that stuff.

For charging at home, yes. (But that's complemented by wind, which often blows strongest at night.)

If you install workplace chargers, though, you can charge at peak solar production.

Yes, and baseline power plants will be burning fuel no matter what. Might as well put them to some use.

Or the money could be invested in power storage making those baseline plants obsolete.

Plenty of wind at night...