Description:

Introduction: As the mobility sector is on the brink of a major transition, environmental performance of electric vehicles (EVs) has become a highly debated topic. While EVs are preferred for their on road emissions they involve use of critical minerals like lithium and other rare earths that are energy and resource intensive during their extraction and manufacturing. The electricity used for charging the batteries has high share of thermal based generation. In general life cycle of vehicle are governed by various factors including technical specification, supply and resources of energy, in-use phase and production and recycling technologies.

Advantages: A comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can help to identify the point of inflection at which an EV becomes more or less environmentally competitive to its ICE counterpart. LCA derived evidence-based results can have huge implications for policy makers, vehicle manufacturers and consumers.