Abstract:

The uptake of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), subject to bottlenecks, seems to have reached a tipping point in the UK and this mirrors a general trend globally. Governments and municipalities are anticipating that a widespread shift to BEVs will significantly reduce transport-related carbon emissions and, therefore, augment their nationally determined contributions to emissions reduction within the Paris Agreement. The contribution to emissions reduction per vehicle unit may be less than the public initially perceive since the important issue here is the lifecycle of the BEV and this is in no sense zero-emission. Furthermore, even though one can make the case that BEVs are a superior alternative to the fossil fuel-powered internal combustion engine, the transition to BEVs may actually facilitate exceeding the carbon budget on which the Paris Agreement ultimately rests. If the transition is a form of substitution that conforms to rather than shifts against current global scales and trends in private transportation, then it is highly likely that BEVs will be a successful failure. If this is not the case, then the transition to BEVs must be coordinated with a transformation of existing private transportation scales and patterns.