Life Cicle GHG emissions (gCO2e/km). Grafik: ICCT

eMove360° study tip: ICCT – Electric cars are the cleanest type of drive system

A study by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) shows that fully electric cars sold in Europe today emit 73% less greenhouse gases over their lifetime than gasoline-powered cars.

With the expansion of renewables in the European electricity mix, the carbon footprint of electric cars is also improving. According to a recent study by the ICCT, fully electric vehicles sold today produce 73% less greenhouse gas emissions over their entire life cycle than comparable gasoline-powered cars – even when production emissions are taken into account. This represents an improvement of 24 percentage points over the ICCT’s 2021 calculations. Other drive types, such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids, show little or no progress in reducing their climate impact in comparison.

The study, a comprehensive life cycle analysis of all major powertrain types, confirms earlier findings: only fully electric cars can achieve the emission reductions necessary to meet climate targets in road transport. Passenger cars are responsible for almost three-quarters of emissions in the European transport sector.

“Electric cars perform significantly better in terms of climate impact than all other technologies, including hybrids and plug-in hybrids, and emissions from electric cars are falling faster than expected just a few years ago,” says Dr. Marta Negri, a scientist at the ICCT. “This progress is mainly due to the accelerated expansion of renewable energies and the high efficiency of battery-powered vehicles.”

By 2025, renewable energy is expected to account for 56% of electricity generation in Europe – an increase of 18 percentage points compared to 2020. The EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) expects this share to rise to 86% by 2045. Since new cars today remain on the road for an average of about 20 years, the increasingly clean electricity mix will further enhance the climate benefits of electric cars. In contrast, the fuel mix of vehicles with combustion engines will continue to be based predominantly on fossil fuels, as both the availability and cost of alternative fuels remain uncertain.

Other drive technologies also lag behind fully electric vehicles in terms of their carbon footprint. Hybrid vehicles produce around 20% fewer emissions than gasoline-powered cars, while plug-in hybrids produce around 30% fewer emissions. One reason for this is that plug-in hybrids are driven less often on electric power in everyday use than originally assumed. Although hybridization offers certain advantages, these are significantly lower than the savings achieved by fully electric cars – and are not sufficient to achieve climate targets in the long term. The study also includes alternative drive systems such as hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. Here, too, a significant reduction in emissions compared to gasoline vehicles is possible – theoretically up to 79% – but only if the hydrogen is produced with electricity from renewable sources. However, this “green” hydrogen is currently hardly available in Europe. Instead, almost all of the hydrogen currently in use comes from fossil natural gas. In this case, fuel cell vehicles only reduce their emissions by around 26% compared to conventional gasoline vehicles.

Misinformation in the debate about electric vehicles

Misinformation and selective data usage has caused uncertainty in the public debate regarding the carbon footprint of electric cars. The ICCT analysis shows how much individual assumptions can distort the results—for example, if one does not take into account that the electricity mix changes over the lifetime of the vehicles, that the actual consumption values of cars usually differ significantly from the official figures, or that vehicles are used for more than 20 years on average. A common argument is that electric cars have a higher carbon footprint due to battery production. Although the manufacture of fully electric vehicles generates around 40% more emissions than gasoline-powered vehicles, this initial “emissions deficit” is offset on average after around 17,000 kilometers, according to the ICCT study – usually within the first to second year of use. “With this study, we want to objectify the public debate and provide politicians and industry with a reliable basis for decision-making,” says Dr. Georg Bieker, senior researcher at the ICCT. “Recently, automotive industry executives have repeatedly misrepresented the climate balance, particularly when comparing electric cars and hybrids. But a life cycle analysis is not a wish list: it must reflect representative use over the entire life of the vehicle and be based on real-world data. Consumers are entitled to reliable, scientifically sound information.”

The ICCT analysis covers all climate-relevant emissions from the production and recycling of vehicles and batteries, the manufacture of fuels and electricity, and energy consumption during vehicle operation and maintenance. The methodology also takes into account the development of the European electricity mix over the entire life cycle of a vehicle and real usage data instead of official consumption figures – a key factor in the climate balance of plug-in hybrids.

This article of Dr. Marta Negri and Georg Bieker is published in the current eMove360° Magazine. Download the PDF for free or order a print version.