![]() Looking at the full supply chains and all the indirect emissions, we compared the total environmental cost of electric and fossil-fuel powered vehicles. I co-authored a paper in Nature Communication with Paul Wolfram, who was then a Yale School of the Environment PhD student and is now a postdoc at the Joint Global Change Research Institute. Q: What about the environmental impact of EV batteries? There will be challenges in going to high market shares of renewables, but we can do it. We have reasonable and low-cost substitutes to fossil fuels. Renewables are the largest new-generation sources coming on to replace sources that are being retired.Įveryone agrees that electricity is actually the easiest sector to decarbonize. In terms of carbon intensity, electricity is generally coming from cleaner sources than burning gasoline. Does that play into the value of electric vehicles? Q: Consumers don’t necessarily know whether the electricity coming into their homes is from renewable or fossil-fuel-based sources. And the state of California has a goal of phasing out new internal combustion engine vehicles entirely by 2035, which is pretty ambitious but other places have similar goals. The Biden administration has a goal of 50% by 2030. Many industry forecasts project that by 2035 to 2040, we are going to be at 60% given current regulations and technology trajectories. ![]() Q: You mentioned electric vehicles reaching 60% of U.S. That is a real challenge and it’s a challenge that the federal and state governments can play a role in facilitating, both through providing funding towards charging station infrastructure and by helping with permitting and expediting regulatory red tape. to 60%, we’re going to need a lot more charging stations. But if we really want to go from electric vehicles being 4% of the sales in the U.S. Tesla just went out and built charging infrastructure for their own cars. If you have more charging stations, people are more likely to buy electric vehicles. If you have more electric vehicles out there, more charging stations are going to be put in. A bank of chargers, say on I-95, will draw from the electric grid in a substantial way.įrom an economics perspective what’s interesting is that this is a two-sided market with network effects. There aren’t that many DC fast chargers in the country yet because they are much more costly to put in, and they require dedicated infrastructure. It allows you to get a cup of coffee, relax a little bit. It’s not as quick as filling up your tank with gasoline, but it’s pretty fast. In half an hour, some of the long-range electric vehicles will recharge to 75% or more. But there are also DC fast-charging stations which draw at a higher voltage and fill up the battery much more quickly. Basically, the cars need to be plugged in overnight. Typical charging stations take about 10 hours to fully charge long-range electric vehicles. Q: Where do things stand with charging infrastructure? It’s unusual to drive more than 400 miles in a day even on a long trip. If you have a 400-mile battery, which some of the offerings on the market today have, it becomes much easier to not worry. This is slowly being overcome, both from a build out of charging stations and from longer range batteries hitting the market. However, range anxiety is a real concern for longer trips, and people make buying decisions based on having the option to take longer trips. ![]() In practice, this is not a concern for people in their daily commute this is not a concern going on errands and picking up children from school. People feel uncomfortable getting an electric vehicle because they’re worried about finding charging stations and the time it takes to recharge. One of the biggest challenges is range anxiety. They are very quiet and because they have amazing low-speed torque, they’re really fun to drive. Operating and maintenance costs are a lot lower for electric vehicles. Q: Beyond emissions, what’s shaping electric vehicle adoption? What’s exciting about them? What hurdles remain? That’s a huge shift in how we think about pathways forward. Electric vehicles are changing the equation the door suddenly is wide open to decarbonizing light-duty transportation. And for a long time, people thought that transportation would be one of the two hardest sectors to decarbonize, alongside industry. While it varies by country, transportation is usually a third or more of total carbon dioxide emissions. Q: How much impact can electric vehicles have in the overall effort to fight climate change? ![]()
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