Uncertain Environmental Footprint of Current and Future Battery Electric Vehicles

The future environmental impacts of battery electric vehicles (EVs) are very important given their expected dominance in future transport systems. Previous studies have shown these impacts to be highly uncertain, though a detailed treatment of this uncertainty is still lacking. We help to fill this gap by using Monte Carlo and global sensitivity analysis to quantify parametric uncertainty and also consider two additional factors that have not yet been addressed in the field.

First, we include changes to driving patterns due to the introduction of autonomous and connected vehicles.

Second, we deeply integrate scenario results from the IMAGE integrated assessment model into our life cycle database to include the impacts of changes to the electricity sector on the environmental burdens of producing and recharging future EVs. Future EVs are expected to have 45–78% lower climate change impacts than current EVs. Electricity used for charging is the largest source of variability in results, though vehicle size, lifetime, driving patterns, and battery size also strongly contribute to variability.

We also show that it is imperative to consider changes to the electricity sector when calculating upstream impacts of EVs, as without this, results could be overestimated by up to 75%.

Authors

Brian Cox, Christopher L Mutel, Christian Bauer, Angelica Mendoza Beltran, Detlef P. van Vuuren

Specifications

Publication title
Uncertain Environmental Footprint of Current and Future Battery Electric Vehicles
Publication date
23 March 2018
Publication type
Publication
Magazine
Environmental Science & Technology
Product number
3292