Design of a Model for Impact Assessment of Electric Vehicles on Day-To-Day Life & Environment

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EV) have showcased to be an excellent alternative to fuel-based vehicles. The EVs have lower carbon emissions, low cost of maintenance, lower travel cost, and better efficiency when compared with their fuel-based counterparts. But currently there are very few EV alternatives that are widely available, which have reduced their adoptability. Moreover, initial cost of vehicle procurement is also high, which reduces public inclination towards these products. To estimate environmental impacts of EVs, along with their adoption probabilities, this text evaluates and compares various EV and fuel-based vehicles. This comparison is done based on initial price, per km cost, estimated CO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> emissions, cost of maintenance, and current market adoption rate. Using these parameters, a general-purpose model is developed which assists in estimating the timeline and price point needed for mass adoption of EVs. This model also estimates customer segments which will be interested in a particular type of EV, and their probability of shifting from current fuel-based vehicles. It also estimates various environmental improvements that will happen due to wide-scale EV adoption, and their impact on progressive cost reduction these vehicles. Based on this evaluation, it was observed that EVs will reduce cost of maintenance by over 45% when averaged over small, medium & large motor vehicle categories, while upon mass adoption, a CO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> reduction of over 76% can be achieved. This is accompanied with up to 8% faster adoption of EVs over a period of 5 years, which will increase air quality by over 68% when compared with current conditions. The model also estimated that batter efficiency of lithium ion (Li-ion) will be improved by over 5x, and technologies like graphene batteries will be cheaper to produce. A combination of Li-ion and Graphene will be used in future EVs which will allow car designers to reduce costs, while maintaining higher battery capacity, which will further lower the costs & environmental impacts of these systems. Due to which, there will be a reduction of 2% in greenhouse effect and reduce global warming by 6% when compared with current fuel-based vehicles.