Assessing the economic and environmental impacts of leasing batteries for electric vehicle fleets

Sammanfattning: Battery electric vehicles (BEV) powered by renewable energy are expected to enable a largedecarbonization of the land-based transport. Recent estimations of the International EnergyAgency suggest that BEVs could grow 20-fold by 2030, reaching 200 to 350 million unitsglobally. However, the environmental impacts of BEVs remains a critical issue to be addressed.Batteries are responsible for 80% of the life cycle environmental impacts of BEVs, mainly dueto the extraction of raw materials, manufacture and charge. A concept that aims at avoiding theexploitation of new materials by extending the lifetime of resources and products is circularity.Among various circular business models, one that so far has not been substantially addressedin the literature is battery leasing.This thesis investigates the economic and environmental impacts of leasing batteries for BEVsas a circular business model and compares them to those of the linear model of selling-buyingbatteries. For doing this, we combine three models, namely a battery fleet model, a net presentvalue (NPV) model and a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA). In contrast to commonLCAs, our battery fleet model considers different types of driving profiles instead of the typical‘average’ profile, which offers a more accurate depiction of reality.Results indicate that leasing batteries may be as profitable as selling them, but leasingcompanies may require higher revenues and pay higher taxes to attain the same NPV as selling.To generate more income, companies would need to charge fees to customers that are notalways beneficial for them. In fact, buying the battery remains the cheapest option for usersdriving more than 10 thousand km/year, which is the majority. From an environmentalperspective, LCA results show that environmental benefits of leasing batteries compared toselling them are marginal. This suggests that while leasing batteries offer some advantages(e.g., making BEVs more affordable, facilitating flexibility to users, promote the repairing,repurpose and recycling of batteries, etc.), it is unlikely to improve the cost-effectiveness andenvironmental impact of buying/selling them.