E-vehicles have the best CO2 footprint

Electrification of vehicles can reduce overall passenger car lifecycle emissions by up to 89 percent. Gasoline and diesel vehicles have the highest amount of greenhouse gas emissions in comparison. This is the result of research conducted by the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich.

A much-discussed topic in electrification is the greenhouse gas balance of vehicles over their entire life cycle - in other words, the amount of pollutants emitted from the production of a vehicle, through its use and scrapping as a whole. This balance makes vehicle emissions comparable in a holistic way, beyond just consumption on the road.

In a new publication, researchers at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich have compared more than 790 current passenger car vehicle variants and show: overall emissions can be significantly reduced with plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles.

Total emissions are decisive

The results make it clear that juxtaposing individual emission sections within the entire product life cycle is not very meaningful when discussing the climate compatibility of different vehicles. For example, battery electric vehicles have the highest emissions during production. In the overall assessment, however, including use and recycling, they perform better than conventional internal combustion vehicles. The emissions from battery production of a current Tesla Model 3 (standard range plus model) are comparable to the usage emissions of a Volkswagen Passat (2.0 TSI model) over a distance of 18,000 km, which is only a fraction of its useful life. Conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles provide the highest overall amount of greenhouse gas emissions over their entire life cycle.

Using green electricity, plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles can reduce overall emissions by 73 percent and 89 percent, respectively, compared to internal combustion vehicles. Alternatively, fuel cell vehicles can reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a similar extent as electric vehicles (which run on conventional electricity) if they currently use commercially available gray hydrogen (60 percent). More generally, renewable fuels and energy result in the lowest possible emissions over the lifetime of vehicles.

790 current vehicles used as data base

The publication is based on a comprehensive database that lists 790 current passenger car models and variants and uses analysis models to make them comparable. »Manufacturer data and individual analyses often fall short and distort consumers' true climate impact of their passenger car purchase decisions. That's why we've been collecting comprehensive data since the beginning of 2020 to independently show what the carbon footprint of different types of powertrains really looks like,« explains Johannes Buberger from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich, who played a key role in driving the analysis forward. To date, there have been few comparable analyses that analyze greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector on the same scale and make them comparable.

The paper is published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, one of the most internationally renowned journals for sustainable energy supply and renewable energies. The journal's impact factor is 15, which means it is ranked #1 out of 44 journals in the Green & Sustainable Science & Technology category. »Publishing in such a highly rated journal demonstrates the quality of research and scientists at the Universität der Bundeswehr München and our expertise in mobility topics,« emphasizes Prof. Thomas Weyh, who holds the professorship for Electrical Power Supply at the Universität der Bundeswehr München and supervises Johannes Buberger as a doctoral student.

The University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich conducts extensive research on mobility topics. Very currently, the future of digitalized and networked mobility is being researched in the dtec.bw project »MORE - Munich Mobility Research Campus« and set up as a model city on the campus of the University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich. The findings of the publication also flow into the research of MORE.