Quantifying the Fuel Use and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Potential of Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

Abstract

Since 1989, the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) has organized the American Tour de Sol in which a wide variety of participants operate electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) for several hundred miles under various roadway conditions (e.g., city center and highway). The event offers a unique opportunity to collect on-the-road energy efficiency data for these EVs and HEVs as well as comparable gasoline-fueled conventional vehicles (CVs) that are driven under the same conditions. NESEA and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) collaborated on collecting and analyzing vehicle efficiency data during the 1998 and 1999 NESEA American Tour de Sols. Using a transportation fuel-cycle model developed at ANL with data collected on vehicle fuel economy from the two events as well as electric generation mix data from the utilities that provided the electricity to charge the EVs on the two Tours, we estimated full fuel-cycle energy use and GHG emissions of EVs and CVs. This paper presents the data, methodology, and results of this study, including the full fuel-cycle energy use and GHG emission reduction potential of the EVs operating on the Tour.