Life Cycle Environment Impacts And Customer Benefits Of Electric Vehicles Based On Individual Travel Patterns

Fleet electrification in the automotive industry is widely seen as an important movement to deal with global energy crisis and environmental problems.Developing electrification strategy that accommodates regional characteristics and individual travel demand has become a major strategic need for both government and automobile manufacturers.This study aims to carefully analyze individual travel characteristics and assess customer benefits and environmental benefits of electric vehicles under heterogeneous driving patterns.The results could help to identify the individuals with most potential for emission reduction,and focus the major processes from a life cycle perspective,thereby contributing to electrification strategy development.Travel profiles from 459 personal passenger vehicles in Beijing,China were collected via GSP data loggers,and vehicle travel profiles from the U.S.and Europe were gathered to establish a global individual travel profile database of 1789 vehicles.A statistical model was developed to characterize individual trip chain distribution and identify habitual and random travel patterns.Beijing has the highest fraction of habitual travel?44%?and relatively short travel distance,presenting advantages for electric vehicle deployment compared with the U.S.and European regions studied in this research.This study quantified customer benefits based on total cost of ownership and travel convenience.In 2015,only PHEV20?AER=20 km?and BEV150 in Beijing could achieve comparable TCO with gasoline vehicles.In 2030,due to rapidly decreased battery cost,BEV150 in Beijing could achieve 67%potential adopter percentage,but only14%in Minneapolis in the U.S.BEV300 has considerable adopter percentage?23%⁴9%?in five studied regions.The annual mileage is usually less than 10,000 km for BEV150adopters,12,000²4,000 km for BEV300 adopters and 18,000 km for BEV450 adopters.The full life cycle emission model is updated and expanded in this study,which accounts for emissions during vehicle operation,fuel cycle and vehicle cycle.In 2015,electric vehicles could reduce VOC,NO_X and GHGs emissions by 34%⁶9%,4%²1%and 15%²8%respectively.Vehicle operation and fuel cycle were the main contributors to GHGs emission,but vehicle material cycle could not be neglected in terms of air polltants emissions.Vehicle material cycle accounts for 44%⁹3%of full life cycle VOC emission,40%⁴6%of NO_X emission,58%⁶4%of PM_2.5 emission,and 73%⁷4%of SO₂ emission.The control strategy of vehicle material cycle VOC emissions should focus on vehicle fluids?e.g.,windshield washer fluid?and vehicle manufacturing?notably the painting process?.Control of material cycle NO_X,primary PM_2.5,SO₂ and GHGs should focus on vehicle and battery production.Due to heterogeneous individual driving patterns,customer and climate benefits of electric vehicles varies significantly among individuals,and a positive synergy between individual customer benefits and climate benefits of electric vehicles.Priority adopter,whose customer benefits ranks top 25%in the region from adopting electric vehicles,could achieve 3.9 times?Beijing?and 1.9².1 times?U.S.and Germany?emission mitigation benefits than other individual users.Because of the skewed distribution of individual customer and climate benefits,evaluations based on fleet average driving profiles could underestimate customer benefits of BEV300 by 61%and climate benefits by 24%on average.BEV450 has significant higher cost and environment footprint,thus indicating future EV development strategy should comprehensively analyze and balance AER,cost and environment impacts.