Critical review of life cycle assessment of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles: A lifespan perspective

Transportation today is almost exclusively powered by the internal combustion engine (ICE). Although engines have become significantly cleaner and more efficient over the last few decades, human health and environmental concerns have led several governments around the world to propose bans on diesel and gasoline cars. The electrification of transportation, while often touted as the only way to mitigate vehicle emissions, comes with its own set of concerns and challenges that must be considered when developing future transportation technologies. Furthermore, there is still significant untapped potential in both ICE concepts and the fuels they use. This paper argues that hybrid systems are the fastest way to reduce CO2 emissions from vehicles and that, when judged on a life-cycle basis, the vehicle technology with the least environmental and health impact is highly region dependent. Therefore, a mixture of transportation technologies is necessary in the future fleet. It is hoped that the recommendations provided in this paper will prompt policymakers to set targets for emission reduction instead of implementing bans on specific technologies, so industry can focus on developing the best solutions for each situation.

Diversity in transportation: Why a mix of propulsion technologies is the way forward for the future fleet

Recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries in view of green chemistry

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) play a key role in advancing electromobility. With an increasing trend in the demand for LIBs, the sustainability prospect of LIBs lifecycle faces many challenges that require proactive approaches. There are various sustainability challenges and risks across the supply and value chains of LIBs from mining, material supplies to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), users to final disposal. Risks are for example the increased raw material demands as well as some economic risks due to price increment or political instabilities in some countries within the raw material supply chain. Despite the promising research efforts on the performance metrics of LIBs and advancing the technology, the research on the various aspects of sustainability of LIBs and its life cycle are still in its infancy and require closer attention. As the editorial of the Special Issue on sustainable supply and value chains of EV batteries, this article presents some of the most pressing challenges of EV LIBs across the different stages of its life cycle. It covers issues from supply and demand of the battery raw materials, battery manufacturing, use, and end-of-life treatments. Within this context the reported findings of some 20 different research teams from across the globe, the state-of-the-art, technical or policy gaps in EV LIBs research and development are presented, as well as market instruments such as innovative business models, and governmental interventions like subsidies or regulations. We grouped the materials presented into five main themes (1) EV and LIB materials demand projections (2) EV LIBs international trade risk (3) EV battery regulation and adoption (4) EV LIBs life cycle assessment (5) and EV LIBs reverse logistics. We conclude by discussing some future research challenges such as the need for more reliable and applicable prediction models that use accurate data on EV stock and end-of-life EVs. Finally, we argue that more collaboration between academia, manufactures, OEMs and the battery recycling industry is needed to implement successful circular economy strategies to achieve environmentally friendly, flexible and cost-efficient battery supplies, use and recycling processes. 

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Challenges and recent developments in supply and value chains of electric vehicle batteries: A sustainability perspective

The international passenger car market is undergoing a transition from vehicles with internal combustion engines to hybrid and fully electrified vehicles to reduce the climate impact of the transportation sector. To emphasize the importance of this needed change, this paper provides holistic comparisons of the total life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by a wide selection of commercially available passenger cars with different powertrains and energy sources. Simple analytical models are used to quantify the total life-cycle GHG emissions in terms of CO 2 -equivalent values relative to the vehicle curb weight and the peak motor power. The production, utilization and recycling emissions are separately quantified based on the latest reviewed emission coefficient values. In total 790 different vehicle variants are considered. The results show that Battery Electric Vehicles have the highest production emissions. For example, the additional production emissions of a Tesla Model 3 Standard Plus approximately correspond to the driving emissions of a Volkwagen Passat 2.0 TSI after 18 000 km. Nonetheless, it is shown that conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles emit the highest amount of total life-cycle GHGs in comparison to vehicles powered by other available energy resources. When using green electricity, plug-in hybrid electric and fully electric vehicles can reduce the total life-cycle emission in comparison to combustion engine vehicles by 73 % and 89 %, respectively. A similar emission reduction is achieved by biogas powered vehicles (81 %). Fuel cell vehicles approximately reduce the GHG emission to a similar extent as electric vehicles (charged with conventional electricity) when using commercially available gray hydrogen (60 %). • Quantification of the CO 2 -equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of 790 different commercially available vehicle variants. • The total life-cycle emissions of hybrid and electric vehicles are reduced by up to 89 % compared to internal combustion engine vehicles. • Modern battery recycling techniques can counterbalance the production emissions by about 60 % to 65 %. • Vehicles powered by renewable fuels, such as compressed biogas, have a similar climate change impact as electric vehicles. • The vehicle life-cycle emissions increase relative to the vehicle curb weight and peak motor power. 

Total CO2-equivalent life-cycle emissions from commercially available passenger cars

In order to reduce vehicle emitted greenhouse gases (GHGs) on a global scale, the scope of consideration should be expanded to include the manufacturing, fuel extraction, refinement, power generation, and end-of-life phases of a vehicle, in addition to the actual operational phase. In this paper, the CO2 emissions of conventional gasoline and diesel internal combustion engine vehicles (ICV) were compared with mainstream alternative powertrain technologies, namely battery electric vehicles (BEV), using life-cycle assessment (LCA). In most of the current studies, CO2 emissions were calculated assuming that the region where the vehicles were used, the lifetime driving distance in that region and the CO2 emission from the battery production were fixed. However, in this paper, the life cycle CO2 emissions in each region were calculated taking into consideration the vehicle’s lifetime driving distance in each region and the deviations in CO2 emissions for battery production. For this paper, the US, European Union (EU), Japan, China, and Australia were selected as the reference regions for vehicle operation. The calculated results showed that CO2 emission from the assembly of BEV was larger than that of ICV due to the added CO2 emissions from battery production. However, in regions where renewable energy sources and low CO2 emitting forms of electric power generation are widely used, as vehicle lifetime driving distance increase, the total operating CO2 emissions of BEV become less than that of ICV. But for BEV, the CO2 emissions for replacing the battery with a new one should be added when the lifetime driving distance is over 160,000 km. Moreover, it was shown that the life cycle CO2 emission of ICV was apt to be smaller than that of BEV when the CO2 emissions for battery production were very large.

Hideo Mochizuki

Papers

Estimation of CO2 Emissions of Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle and Battery Electric Vehicle Using LCA