Battery electric vehicles show the lowest carbon footprints among passenger cars across 1.5-3.0 °C energy decarbonisation pathways.

Abstract

Passenger car carbon footprints are highly sensitive to future energy systems, a factor often overlooked in life cycle assessment. We use a time-dependent prospective life cycle assessment to enhance carbon footprints under four 1.5-3.0 °C decarbonisation pathways for electricity, fuel, and hydrogen from an energy-based integrated assessment model. Across 5000 comparative cases, battery electric vehicles consistently have the lowest carbon footprints compared to hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fuel-cell vehicles. For example, battery electric vehicles show an average 32 to 47% lower footprint than hybrid combustion in 3.0 °C and 1.5 °C climate-compatible futures, respectively. This is driven by greater projected decarbonisation of electricity compared to fossil-dominated fuels and hydrogen. Battery electric vehicles meaningfully retain their advantage for mileages over 100,000 km, even in regions with carbon-intensive electricity since these are anticipated to decarbonise the most. Although our study supports battery electric vehicles as the most reliable climate-mitigation option for passenger cars, reducing their high manufacturing footprint remains important.