EVs, gas, hydrogen and more…

We live in the age, where gas-powered cars or ICEs (short for Internal Combustion Engine) are not the only types of vehicles on the road. There are various other kinds of cars available on the market in this day and age. Each of them has specific upsides and downsides to them. Some are more expensive, some of them more environmentally friendly, some offer a longer range as a result of a more energy-dense fuel and so on. I will be comparing all of them based on fuel production and price, overall price of the car, environmental impact, infrastructure and much more. However, I will mainly focus on electric vs. gas since this is the most commonly debated comparison when it comes to cars right now. I will try to address the most commonly debated topics such as cobalt mining, sources of electricity for EVs etc. I will try to base this analysis on data from various countries, but will probably mostly focus on the EU and US since these are the markets I am most familiar with. I will also try to cross-reference the data, since I want to make an unbiased report on the matter, one that is based on facts and research. However, there goes a disclaimer: I am not an expert in this field, I am just a technology enthusiast, interested in any new technology and curious about how things really are. So I encourage you to research my claims yourself!

Just to get started, here is a list of different types of cars by the type of fuel that they use:

• ICE – Internal Combustion Engine or. just simply gasoline cars – these can either use diesel or gasoline,
• EV – Electric Vehicle,
• Hybrid – a hybrid between an ICE and an EV,
• Biofuel,
• Hydrogen,
• LPG.

There are perhaps other types of cars (engines), but I will primarily focus on ICE, EV and hydrogen and try to say a bit about others.

Before I begin…

There are some things that I have to clarify to avoid any confusion on your end. When I talk about emissions, I will primarily be using the term “CO2 emissions”, which naturally refers to how much CO2 is emitted by a certain process, production or so. However, I will also be using terms such as carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions. These more or less mean the same – they represent how much CO2 is produced by that process. For example, methane (CH4) is another greenhouse gas, but it is much more potent, meaning that you need far less of it to produce the same greenhouse effect.

CO2 emissions

When it comes to emissions, there have been many debates held on this topic. But to put it shortly, gas cars are in no scenario better in terms of CO2 emissions than EVs and hydrogen cars. Just thinking about it logically, it makes no sense for them to emit less CO2 emissions than the latter. Producing electricity in a building specialized for this – in a power plant – is much more efficient than burning fuel in a small car engine. And this does not even take into account other emissions dangerous to our health, which especially in cities can be a problem when you have a large number of cars congested in a relatively small space full of people. And to say something about EVs and hydrogen, EVs require more initial resources and energy to make the car itself, however over the span of their lifetime they emit far less CO2 than gas cars. Hydrogen cars suffer from a different problem – the production of hydrogen these days is not very efficient and requires a lot of energy, so in the end, while the only emission of such a car is water vapour, producing its fuel is not emissions-free.

Bet let us not talk too much and let’s look at actual data, and crunch some numbers. A study by the Eindhoven University of Technology from 2020 compared the lifetime greenhouse gas emissions of EVs with those of gas cars.

As we can see from the table above, it is estimated that a similar EV will emit 54% to 82% less CO2 emissions over its lifetime (the estimate assumes a 250,000km lifetime). I think it is also important to take into account that these numbers are based on how electricity is currently produced – mainly from coal – and that in the future producing energy might be much more environmentally friendly than it is right now. This would imply that electric cars can potentially be even more green than they currently are.

Another study by IEA analyzed The Role of Critical Minerals in Clear Energy Transition and compared EVs to ICEs. The study suggests that once again EVs emit far less CO2 emissions even with current sources of electricity, in addition, the emission could be reduced by another 25% with low-carbon electricity (solar, wind, nuclear…).

On the graph, orange represents electricity used by EVs, light green battery minerals, green battery assembly, blue vehicle manufacturing and yellow fuel cycle emissions.

And to cite another study by MIT:

For similar-sized vehicles in the U.S. today, per-mile lifecycle (including vehicle and battery production) greenhouse gas emissions for battery electric vehicles run on the present U.S.-average grid electricity are approximately 55% of the emissions from conventional internal combustion engine vehicles.

Insight into Future Mobility, MIT Energy Initiative

Considering that most of the U.S. energy comes from non-renewable sources (80% as of 2022), there is room for much improvement.

So overall it seems that even with current energy sources EVs are roughly 60% cleaner when it comes to CO2 emissions with the potential of becoming even cleaner as more and more energy is produced via renewable sources such as solar, wind and hydro as well as other low-carbon sources such as nuclear.

Now let’s look at hydrogen and other options. Hydrogen is a very interesting fuel option. It has a really high energy density of 120 MJ/kg compared to gasoline, which has an energy density of 45.8 MJ/kg. This is also the reason why hydrogen is used in many rockets today. It was also used on the second and third stage of the famous Saturn V rocket that took people to the moon. Another benefit of hydrogen is that there are no emissions since burning hydrogen produces only water.

On the other hand, hydrogen has its disadvantages, which is why electric cars are dominating the market instead of hydrogen cars. One of the problems is the fact that hydrogen is hard to contain. It is a very small molecule – in fact, the smallest since hydrogen contains only a single proton and an electron. Thus hydrogen requires large tanks for storage. This however is likely not the biggest problem.

The biggest problem arises from the fact that producing hydrogen is expensive – twice as expensive as gasoline and much more expensive than electricity. There are several ways of producing it:

• Natural Gas Gasification,
• Electrolysis,
• Renewable Liquid Reforming,
• Fermentation…

However, there are some good news. Many car-makers have entered the business and are investing heavily in the technology. Among them are Toyota, Hyundai, Honda and BMW. And perhaps with continued investment, hydrogen will become another, better alternative to gas cars. The biggest challenge in my opinion is getting the cost down. Similarly to electric cars, hydrogen has the potential to bring down emissions by up to 89% if hydrogen were produced in a more environmentally friendly way from renewable sources of energy. Right now, however, EVs still vastly outperform hydrogen cars when it comes to CO2 emissions.

To sum it up, EVs seem to be the best option we have right now to reduce CO2 emissions and hydrogen is the second best option given the process of producing it has improved vastly over the years. And yeah, gas cars are likely to disappear in a decade or two in developing countries, but there will be challenges getting there. I will discuss some of them in the following paragraphs.

Lithium mining, batteries and other problems

Environmental pollution is another big topic when it comes to the comparison of EVs and ICE cars. It is often said the production of lithium causes such a negative impact on the environment that it offsets all the benefits of having an EV. However, this is not really true.

Speaking purely of CO2 emissions, even when lithium and rare earth metals mining is taken into account, the emissions are much lower. Ore mining emissions are represented by the light green colour on the chart in the emissions section. They represent a tiny fraction of the total CO2 emission of a car. Also, the CO2 emissions coming from lithium-ion mining are primarily a result of using a lot of energy – electricity – in refining it. This means that lithium mining can become greener if the sources of electricity used for refining come from renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind, nuclear etc. In addition to that, batteries that have a lower carbon footprint are being developed such as iron-based batteries. These batteries are more environmentally friendly and have the potential to be much cheaper with the only downside being, that they have less capacity. So when such technology matures, this might become a better alternative to lithium.

Secondly, there is the argument of destroying the environment. It is true that mining for lithium can have a negative impact on the environment. Mainly it is the fact that lithium mining consumes a lot of water (direct lithium extraction from brine). Most of the lithium today is produced in China and South America (Chile) via the mentioned method. Research has shown a possible connection between the reduced water levels (which are likely a cause of lithium mining) and a decrease in the flamingo population between 10 and 12% in the area where lithium is being mined. There was also a decrease in vegetation, strongly indicative of the underground water shortage (brine and water are obtained through extraction from the underground).

A similar argument can be made in regard to rare metals extraction. Especially cobalt has been the centre of attention. 98% of the cobalt is mined as a by-product of nickel and copper mining. Cobalt mining can also be damaging to the environment, but the main problem lies elsewhere: the main source of cobalt is Congo. More than half of the cobalt comes from Congo, where most of the copper, nickel and cobalt mines are located. The problem is, that there are not many regulations regarding mining there, which means working in these mines borders slavery, since rules regarding such mining are ignored. There is not much machinery and everything is mined using pickaxes, shovels and manual tools. Mining pits often collapse, people get injured and even children are forced to work in these mines. It is awful and it would be better if companies avoided sourcing cobalt from such countries and rules regarding artisanal mining should be enforced. Unfortunately, we live in a world where money often comes before human lives, so this is still happening.

Fortunately, there seem to be some solutions to this problem. For example, Tesla announced at its Investor Day in March 2023, that its next generation of electric motors would not contain any rare earth materials, including cobalt. This is a huge step in the right direction if true!

So, mining rare earth metals and lithium is an environmentally damaging activity, however, solutions and alternatives are being actively developed. Secondly, this damage has to be put in perspective. Producing ICE cars and fuel that powers these cars is not environmentally friendly either, even ignoring the CO2 emissions. Some of the dangers of oil drilling include: oil spills, disturbing the land and marine ecosystems, removing vegetation, hydraulic fracturing may produce a lot of waste water etc. Thus in my opinion the benefits of electrifying transport outweigh the negative impacts.

Public transport

This is a debate I have often had with people. Claiming that we don’t need cars at all. So let me express my opinion before I look at some data. To sum it up, public transport in urban areas and cars in the countryside, since population density is very low there. The percentage of people in the countryside is lower every year, so more and more people will begin to use public transport if it improves.

In my opinion, public transport is clearly a better option than cars. It produces fewer CO2 emissions, since transporting many people in a bigger vehicle that uses not that much more fuel (this is some data about buses, trains are even more efficient) is way more efficient than having a car transporting usually only a single person – this mostly applies to people going to work every day with a car. This reduces CO2 emissions and is cheaper as well. It also reduces congestion on the road, which is great.

However, there are some concerns to address. The first problem that I see is the fact that in many countries public transport is unreliable. I personally come from Slovenia, where one can usually get anywhere with a bus or a train, as long as you are travelling between bigger cities. Especially Ljubljana has really good public transport connections. However, as soon as you try to go somewhere else, delays and a low number of connections start to become a problem. I even have first-hand experience with this, travelling to Maribor and back home twice a week because of my studies and the experience that I have is as follows: trains are commonly late and often full of annoying people. Then there is the bus in my hometown – there usually is none at the time that I arrive. And buses in Maribor are no better. I sincerely hope that this will improve in the future.

So in reality, sadly, public transport is not an option for that many people. It works out for me since I don’t mind walking home from the train station. However, for people who don’t live in the city that is not an option. Especially when you take into consideration that in Slovenia 73% of people live in the countryside.

Globally, however, this number is at just 45% and has been declining every year. There are also a number of countries/cities where public transport works really well. Some of them are Japan, Austria, Hong Kong, Singapore, Berlin, Paris, Oslo etc. Many people here use public because it is reliable, fast and enjoyable. People then actually don’t need a car.

This was a bit of my rambling, but now let’s get to the facts and numbers.

First of all, we have to talk about emissions. While buses on their own, being bigger vehicles, emit more CO2 emissions, the picture changes as soon as you take into account the fact that they usually transport many people at a time. They are also utilized more efficiently by transporting people all day unlike a car, which is usually only used up to a couple of times a day. This leads to less lifetime emissions of a vehicle per passenger(s) transported. It gets even better when you consider that buses can also be electrified. Trains are even better and more efficient since they run on electricity and use rails instead of roads. According to the research by BEIS national rail in the UK is the greenest option when it comes to carbon emissions right after walking and cycling (which, if you exclude the food you have to eat to get the energy, is a zero-emission way of travelling). Below is a table that summarizes the research data. The right column represents the average emissions per passenger per kilometre in kg of carbon emissions. You can find the entire table here.

Another research by UCLA similarly shows that taking public transport in the US reduces CO2 emissions by 45%.

So in summary, public transport is great! There are fewer CO2 emissions, it is cheaper and governments should invest heavily in further developing the infrastructure. And as more and more people move to cities fewer and fewer cars will be needed. The more people use it, the better it will become. However, unfortunately, there are still some places where public transport is not an option, especially in countries with a large portion of their population in the countryside.

Price

One of the big drawbacks of EVs is that they are usually much more expensive. This is primarily due to the cost of batteries, since they still cost a lot to make, even though their price has decreased tenfold in the last 10 years. Furthermore, the technology is still improving every day and batteries are getting cheaper every year. Thus the cost of batteries should not pose a problem to the adoption of EVs in the coming years.

Secondly, the EV market has just started expanding in the past few years following the success of companies like Tesla, which entered the EV market with the Tesla Model S in 2012. The market has been expanding rapidly since then and other companies have also started producing EVs. Here is the chart of sales of electric cars by company brand in the US. In the US Tesla is still leading by a mile, which is not ideal since it would be great if other car producers also stepped up their game to introduce some competition. The situation is much different if we take a look at the Chinese or European EV market. In China BYD is the largest EV producer, even surpassing Tesla. In Europe, the largest EV brands are Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW and Tesla, each having a roughly 8% to 9% market share, so the competition in the EU is much better. The EV market is developing and the cars are getting cheaper due to the competition. For example, Tesla has been decreasing the prices of its models repeatedly this year. The EVs are getting cheaper due to advancing technology, cheaper batteries and competition in the EV market!

Another thing is that a lot of EVs even today are still in the medium to high price range. Just look at the Tesla cars – the starting price of a Model 3 is 41.990 EUR at the time of writing in Slovenia. Ouch, that is quite the price, especially when you consider the fact that the average cost of a car in the EU is about 27.500 EUR. Luckily, it seems that more cheaper EVs are coming to the market in the following years with Volkswagen announcing the 2025 ID. 2all model that might cost less than 25.000 EUR. Tesla also hinted at developing a new cheaper model, commonly referred to as Tesla Model 2 – but it is just rumoured for now. There are also other cheaper EVs already on the market like Nissan LEAF with a starting price of 28.000 USD in the US at the time of writing. There are also federal EX tax credits in some countries that can make the purchase of an EV much cheaper.

We also have to talk about the total cost of ownership, which is lower when it comes to EVs since EVs do not need gasoline, but instead are powered by electricity. EV owners tend to spend around 60% less on fuel since electricity is much cheaper than gas. This largely depends on electricity prices, charging rates, EV efficiency etc. For example, fast chargers usually cost, gas prices also vary by country and the same goes for electricity. The maintenance costs of EVs are also much lower. When you put all these numbers together it seems that already today owning certain EVs with similar specifications is cheaper in the long run than owning an ICE. This ratio will likely improve even further in the upcoming years. The lower fuel prices and the maintenance costs seem to be the main reasons for the lower lifetime costs of an EV over an ICE car. So yeah, with the choice of the right EV, the long-term cost is actually lower!

Range and charging

This likely is one of the factors that people might see as the weak points of EVs, although it probably isn’t as big of a problem as people make it to be. Most people still fear their EVs will run out of range or that they will not be able to find a charging station. Here are some top reasons why people don’t want to buy an EV:

As you can see most people’s range anxiety usually goes away after getting the EV. This fear however is understandable, since the technology is new, the way a car charges is different and if your car runs out of electricity you cannot just simply fill it up. So, let’s look at some numbers!

In 2021 the range the median range of gas cars was 72% higher than BEVs and the maximum range of an EV was 405 miles – roughly the same as the median range of an ICE. 405 miles is roughly 650 km. The average range of an EV was 234 miles (375 km) and of a gas car 650 km. Today the car EV with the longest range is Lucid Air Grand Touring with 516 miles (830 km) and the average range of an EV in Europe is hovering around 350 km right now. It seems range is not the key problem here, especially when you take into account the fact that the average distance travelled by car is a mere 32.9 km per day per person. The distance is even lower in some countries like Canada or Japan, roughly the same in Australia and 9km higher in the US.

The problem likely lies in the yet not fully developed charging network for EVs. There are not enough fast-charging grids or sometimes not enough grids at all. If the charging infrastructure were developed enough people likely wouldn’t fear not having enough range and not being able to find a charging station. The rate at which charging stations are being installed will need to increase. Currently, not enough new charging stations are being installed. Once the charging network is more developed the EVs range should not pose a big problem anymore. The electric grid likely won’t be overloaded by the amount of charging EVs as explained in the following chapter.

Let’s also address the problem of convenience when charging the car – the fact that some people will find charging the car annoying and that the charging stations will be fully occupied. Let’s view this problem in its current state – not a fully developed charging grid and not the fastest charging times. Right now, to charge an EV you first have to find to find a charger. I found a map which shows – at least to my knowledge – all the charging stations in my little city. However, I am not sure whether it tells you if it is unoccupied. Tesla has this figured out pretty well, where the car automatically sets the GPS to the nearest empty charging station (usually a fast charger, in places where EV charging is well developed). Then you charge the car by plugging it in the charger. A 22kW charging station should mean a 5 to 8-hour charging time for a Tesla Model 3 for a full charge. With a range of 423km and an average distance of 32.9 km travelled daily this would mean having to charge the car roughly every 10 to 12 days. Or you could charge your car at home, at a shopping mall, at work or for less time and more often. Indeed this does introduce some inconvenience and again it all mostly comes down to the fact that the charging EV charging grid is still fairly undeveloped and there are almost no fast chargers. For example, the Tesla Supercharger can charge up to 200 miles in just 15 minutes, but there are none where I live… If the charging times were this low, I think people would complain far less. On the other hand, the EV can charge without one’s supervision, so you can let it charge while you are away.

The verdict then seems to be that the charging grid needs improvement. More fast chargers need to be installed and more chargers in general to prevent people from not being able to charge their EVs. If the EV charging network were fully developed, one could simply let the car charge while going to a store or something and return to an almost full battery. Therefore, instead of focusing solely on increasing EV battery capacity, it appears to be a growing trend among some car makers to invest heavily in the development of the EV charging grid.

Can the electric grid handle all the EVs?

One of the common arguments against EVs is that the electric grid cannot handle all the EVs – specifically adding all these EVs will at some point crash the grid, cause outages etc. So let’s take a look at the problem.

First, there is the problem of energy production. Producing more energy is likely the least of our problems. Firstly, there is the fact that if we replaced 80% of the cars with EVs the total energy consumption would increase by only 10 to 15%. So for safe measure let’s assume a 19% increase in energy demand assuming all of the cars were replaced by EVs by the year 2050 (it is assumed that 50% of the vehicles will be EVs in 2035). With that in mind: energy demand in Europe has been decreasing from 2005 to 2015, then rose back and fell again in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. The demand fell yet again in 2022 by 3% primarily due to ongoing war and less usage of natural gas, mainly imported from Russia. We have however handled these problems pretty well. This shows that energy producers can react to increasing energy demand as we have seen both an increase and decrease in energy demand. At the same time, the total amount of fossil fuels used for producing energy has been decreasing every year bringing us cleaner energy. The amount of energy produced by renewable energy sources (solar, wind) has been increasing steadily every year, however unfortunately hydro and nuclear have seen a decline due to fears of nuclear energy being dangerous (which it by the way isn’t and nuclear waste really isn’t such a big issue) – though this is a topic on its own, which I will not discuss today. So if we take into account an annual growth of 1.1% in energy production, which is by all means more than possible (the EU has seen an annual increase in electricity demand and production of roughly 1.5% from 1990 to 2007), this would bring us to an increase of 14% by 2035 (above the required 9,5%) and to a 34% increase in 2050 (again above 19%). And this assumes a fixed growth of 1,1% relative to today’s electricity demand. So overall it seems that this is achievable when you take into account these numbers and the fact that energy consumption has actually been decreasing since 2005.

Then there is the problem of energy spikes. Energy spikes are arguably the biggest problem when it comes to adding more EVs to the grid. It is true that for example if all people charged their EVs at once, the grid would get overloaded. For example, let’s assume that all the cars in the UK were replaced with EVs. If all of them were charging at the same time in a typical home, the energy required would be three times the UK grid capacity. Assuming they were all fast-charging, they would need 21.5 times the grid capacity. That would be a serious problem, that couldn’t be managed. However, the fact is, not everyone charges their cars at the same time and EVs are mostly charged at night when the energy consumption is not at its peak. In addition to that most of the time, people don’t use the whole battery capacity every day, which means the cars have to be charged only partially. As an example in Europe, the average distance travelled by car daily is 32.8 km (globally that number is somewhere around 15 km). When we take into account the average range of an electric car, which is 349 km in Europe, we can do a simple calculation, which shows that on average around 9% of the battery has to be charged every day. When you take that into account in addition to people not charging their cars all at the same time this does not appear to be such a big problem, as long as certain measures are taken. These measures include but are not limited to:

• Incentives for charging EVs at desired times – when the energy consumption is not at its peak,
• Smart charging, which limits the charging rate in accordance with the energy demand,
• Allowing EVs to act as batteries and return the energy to the grid when it is mostly needed (this would be especially useful when the primary source of energy is solar) – V2G

Thus as long as the adoption of EVs is carefully thought out, energy demand spikes likely won’t be the problem for the developed countries. Others will have to invest more in expanding the grid, but with a gradual transition to electrifying the car industry, there will be enough time for expansion.

More sources:

• Solaronev
• Virta
• Insideevs

Conclusion

In conclusion, the comparison between electric vehicles (EVs) and gas-powered cars reveals several key findings. Firstly, in terms of CO2 emissions, EVs clearly outperform internal combustion engine (ICE) cars. Even when considering the CO2 emissions associated with lithium and rare earth metal mining, EVs still emit significantly less CO2 overall. The production of electricity in power plants is more efficient than burning fuel in small car engines (plus electricity can also be obtained from renewable sources of energy), further contributing to the lower emissions of EVs. Additionally, the development of greener lithium mining practices, as well as alternative battery technologies, holds promise for further reducing the environmental impact of EVs.

The data from studies discussed in the article consistently show that EVs emit significantly less CO2 over their lifetime compared to ICE vehicles. This advantage can be further enhanced as energy production shifts towards renewable sources. Even with the current energy mix, EVs demonstrate a 60% reduction in CO2 emissions, and this percentage could increase with the adoption of low-carbon electricity sources.

Hydrogen cars, despite their advantages such as high energy density and zero emissions, face challenges related to containment and expensive production methods. While investments from various car manufacturers are being made to improve the technology, EVs currently surpass hydrogen cars in terms of CO2 emissions reduction.

Regarding the range and the charging grid, range anxiety and concerns about the electric grid pose challenges to the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), but they can be effectively addressed. The range of EVs is improving, and when considering the average daily distance travelled, range limitations become less significant. The primary issue lies in the development of a robust charging infrastructure, which requires the expansion of fast charging stations and charging grids. Additionally, careful planning, smart grid solutions, and incentives for off-peak charging can mitigate concerns about the electric grid’s capacity to handle increased EV demand. By prioritizing the expansion of the charging network and implementing strategies for optimized charging patterns, the obstacles can be overcome, paving the way for a cleaner and more sustainable transportation future.

In summary, EVs along with public transport emerge as the most favorable option for reducing CO2 emissions in the transportation sector, while hydrogen cars show potential for improvement in the future. Gas-powered cars are increasingly being phased out, particularly in developed countries, due to their environmental drawbacks. The analysis presented here underscores the need for continued research and investment in clean and sustainable transportation solutions.