Techno-economic assessment of vehicle electrification in the six largest global automotive markets

Abstract

Recently, many countries have set the target for the automakers to sell only vehicles with zero tailpipe emissions in the future, like in Europe, the United Kingdom, as well as the United States of America, promoting a major shift towards electric vehicles globally. But the electric vehicles do have emissions during their entire life cycle, these emissions vary from country to country, depending mainly on their electricity generation mix. Moreover, considering the cost aspect, an Electric Vehicle with a driving range of 500 km costs way higher than an Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle offering twice the range. Hence, in this study, a numerical evaluation is done for conventional diesel, hybrid and electric sports utility vehicles, on real drive cycles in the six largest automotive markets, namely, China, United States of America, Europe, Japan, India and Brazil, to assess the degree of electrification suitable for lowest life cycle emissions and total cost of ownership in each country. The global results for diesel, hybrid and electric vehicles of life cycle CO2 emissions are 0.21–0.29 kg/km, 0.13–0.20 kg/km and 0.08–0.20 kg/km while for total cost of ownership are 0.21–0.33 €/km, 0.23–0.34 €/km and 0.37–0.47 €/km, respectively. Thus, although the long-range Electric Vehicles can be emitting lowest in few markets, its total cost of ownership will still be the highest.