Estimating the Potential Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Current and Future Electric Passenger Cars

Sammanfattning: The road transport sector is heavily dependent on fossil-fuel based technologies, and as a result, contribute a significant share towards climate change and other environmental problems. If the transport sector is to reduce its adverse impacts on climate change, then it requires a global shift towards low-carbon technologies. However, deploying these new technologies brings uncertainties regarding their environmental profile, hence, the need for applying a life cycle approach in evaluating their potential environmental impacts. This thesis aim to evaluate the potential life-cycle environmental impacts associated with travelling 1 km in a battery electric cars (BEV) and plug-in hybrid electric cars (PHEV) operated in the EU at present-day, and in the future up till 2050. The study applied the life cycle assessment (LCA) and ReCiPe Midpoint (H) methodologies to assess and calculate the potential life cycle environmental impacts of all vehicle scenarios. The datasets of the vehicles have been modelled with a modular approach by linking together various vehicle components. The future time perspective based on two future scenarios; the Mod-RES, representing the reference future scenario and the High-RES representing a future ambitious policy scenario.   The EU28 electricity production based on Fichtner, et al. was used to model the use phase all vehicle scenarios. The result showed BEV performed best in indicators for global warming (GWP), ozone depletion and fossil resource scarcity. The thesis best estimate for GWP is 5.61E-2 kgCO2 eq resulting from the BEV_High-RES scenario; representing a decrease in GWP of around 80% and 69% when compared to the ICEV and the baseline BEV respectively. On the other hand, the baseline BEV performed worst in impact categories related to human toxicity and damage to ecosystems; the conventional gasoline car showed the lowest estimate for indicators on human toxicity, acidification and eutrophication as defined in the baseline scenario. Nonetheless, the future scenarios showed promising results for all technologies; as projections for stringent environmental regulations, ‘cleaner’ energy systems and continuous advancement in vehicle technologies offered a significant reduction in all impact categories. Notably, the BEV reduced its impact on toxicity categories to around 38% of the initial values for the baseline scanario. Results are strongly dependent on assumptions regarding the vehicle and battery lifetime, the use phase electricity source and the vehicle consumption.  The findings establish the significance of carrying out a full LCA, including future time perspective and assessing impact categories beyond climate change. Also, it underlined the suggestion that production of electric cars raised more concern for EVs than conventional cars; thus, the tendency for environmental problem-shifting and the need for policy-makers to recognise existing trade-offs.