Temporal environmental and economic performance of electric vehicle and conventional vehicle: A comparative study on their US operations

Electric vehicles(EVs) have attracted considerable interests in recent years owing to its potential in reducing environmental emissions and operating costs from the transportation sector. However, the temporal environmental and economic benefits from replacing internal-combustion-engine vehicles (ICEVs) with EVs during the operation phase is not clear. Different from ICEVs, EVs use lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) as the power source, which degrades over time, reducing the driving range and charging-discharging efficiency, increasing the energy consumption, operating cost and environmental impacts. Currently, most of the environmental and economic analyses of EVs have not considered the performance worsens over time and thus not accurate in the long-term assessment. In order to fill this gap, this paper presents a mathematical model to evaluate and benchmark the economic and environmental benefits of adopting EVs over ICEVs over a 10-year operation phase by incorporating the battery degradation and spatiotemporal operation models. This analysis indicates that the EV energy consumption increases 86.3 Wh/mile after ten years' operation, which could reduce the GHG emissions and economic saving potential of replacing ICEV with EVs by 18.9% and 9.28%. Furthermore, on the state-level, considering the battery replacement, the environmental (Indiana and Wyoming) and economic (Hawaii) benefits from the adoption of EVs over ICEVs are mostly counteracted during the operation phase. The results can provide a basic understanding of the environmental-economic performance of EVs compared to ICEVs over the 10-year vehicle operation phase, which could assist policy-makers and customers in making a better selection of vehicles and battery replacement based on their specific operation conditions.

Automated summary

This study uses a mathematical model to evaluate the economic and environmental benefits of EVs compared to ICEVs over a 10-year operation phase, finding that EV energy consumption increases over time, affecting the potential GHG emissions reduction and cost savings from replacing ICEVs. At the state level, some areas may experience negative environmental and economic impacts from adopting EVs during the operation phase after considering battery replacement.