2023-04-26 22:00:00
In recent years, in France and around the world, the electrification of the vehicle fleet has experienced accelerated growth. This responds to the need to massively decarbonize the economy, and is achieved under the combined pressure of regulations and public expectations. It is clear that the electric vehicle effectively eliminates emissions from combustion during the use phase, but does it constitute a credible solution for low-carbon mobility? In other words, does the electric vehicle bring a real environmental benefit? And if so, is this really true in all contexts? Would there be trade-offs depending on the impacts considered?
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the ideal tool to address these issues. And vice versa, the example of electric vehicles is often used to explain to the general public the foundations of LCA, with the transfer of impacts between stages of the life cycle: a “zero emission” vehicle certainly in use, but for which it is necessary to produce electricity to supply it, and upstream of the batteries which will have to be recycled at the end of their life. This simple textbook case, known to all, perfectly illustrates the concept of “life cycle”, the integral consideration of which, from the extreme upstream to the extreme downstream, alone makes it possible to make a diagnosis. valid on the environmental impact of the vehicle, and to compare it on a reliable basis with other types of vehicles, whether thermal, hybrid or hydrogen…
The subject is also of interest to public authorities, professionals and experts, as evidenced by the extensive literature available on the subject, on all continents. In France, the Ademe, anxious to clarify the choices of the government, thus commissioned a comparative LCA study of electric vehicles and thermal vehicles, published in 2013 . Ten years later, the results are still largely valid, because the study was prospective and the hypotheses were generally confirmed.
It is also a subject of study for professionals in the automotive industry, who have been carrying out LCAs of their vehicles for many years, either to communicate with their customers or to guide design choices with a view to reducing environmental impacts – we then speak of eco-design – or finally more recently to assess their overall corporate environmental performance on a scope including the use of the vehicles they put on the market, this is what the t is called “scope 3” of the carbon footprint.
Finally, it is a subject of methodological deepening for LCA experts, who are confronted through the LCA of the electric vehicle with a good number of current research subjects in LCA.
After a brief review of LCA, which readers who are already competent on the subject can dispense with, this article first deals with the specific methodology for carrying out an LCA for an electric vehicle, then the results of the LCAs carried out. in this domain. It then seeks to shed light on the issues that may be the subject of methodological developments over the next few years, and concludes with the strategic decisions that might be drawn from the results of this work, both at the level of the State and to that of businesses.
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