Kia Picanto gas-powered city car next to a Polestar 4 electric car.
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Meeting climate goals will require a substantial cut in car mileage achieved through road space reallocation, parking levies, road user charging, and massively increased investment in public transit and active travel infrastructures.
That caveat aside, it’s also essential that the pared-back car fleet goes all-electric. Petrol-powered cars should be phased out in favor of electric vehicles (EVs), and it’s now no longer true that a tiny car with an internal combustion engine (ICE) will have lower lifetime emissions, including the carbon emitted during manufacture, than a large luxury EV.
EVs may not have tailpipe emissions, but the carbon emitted during their manufacture, including the sourcing of the minerals for their heavy batteries, is still substantial.
However, some auto manufacturers are working hard to reduce the carbon footprint of their vehicles. Using Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), these manufacturers publish cradle-to-gate and cradle-to-grave statistics. The cradle-to-gate measurement is an assessment of a partial product life cycle from resource extraction to the factory gate before it is transported to the consumer. Cradle-to-grave measurements add mileage of use, and the ease or otherwise of dismantling for scrap, including recycling or reusing the battery. Most EV batteries will outlast the vehicles they were installed in, and even then, they have a worthwhile second life, perhaps as grid storage, before they need to be stripped down for recycling.
Rivian RT1 trucks are assembled and tested on April 14, 2021, before the new Rivian plant fully … More
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Confusingly, car companies don’t stick to the same LCA benchmarks. For instance, while EV makers Rivian and Tesla list their vehicle’s CO2 emissions in grams per mile driven over the car’s lifetime, Rivian assumes their vehicles have a 155,000-mile lifespan while Tesla has typical lifetime usage of 200,000 miles, meaning Tesla has 45,000 more miles to spread their emissions over, lowering their emissions per mile.
Polestar—which started life in 2005 as the brand name for a Volvo-tuning, gasoline-powered Swedish motorsports team, then transformed into an EV marque when Volvo bought the team 10 years later and is now owned by EV maker Geely of China—is arguably the world’s most transparent auto maker. Since 2020, the Gothenburg-headquartered company has published annual full-disclosure sustainability reports, publishing emissions data and the full Life Cycle Assessment for its cars.
Polestar 4 battery electric compact luxury crossover SUV on display during the 2024 Wheels at … More
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The Polestar 4 SUV Coupe generates about 20 tons of CO2 to build. Charging the car on public chargers for 200,000 miles would generate a further 10 tons of CO2. So, that’s 30 tons of CO2 for 200,000 miles of driving.
Running the small Kia Picanto (a city car with a pretty efficient petrol engine) for 200,000 miles generates 37 tons of CO2. And that’s without the CO2 generated, the carbon debt, to build this ICE car, the stats for which Kia doesn’t publish.
That Polestar’s large, luxurious SUV has a lower environmental footprint over its lifetime than a tiny, gasoline-sipping city car doesn’t mean sales of such vehicles should be encouraged–smaller EVs made to the same eco-conscious standards would have even lower lifetime emissions, and wouldn’t pose so much danger to pedestrians and cyclists—but it’s essential to bust the myth that small ICE cars are better for the planet than humoungous e-SUVs. (An argument for another article is whether any oversized cars, and their larger, particulate-shedding tires, should be allowed in cities.)
Geely makes the Polestar 4 in a factory in China, which has solar panels on the roof and gets the bulk of its electricity from a hydroelectric power station. Charging the Polestar 4 at home using the ever-greener grid or home solar panels would generate even less lifetime CO2.
Carbon Debt
Analysis from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) estimates that the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of 2024 electric sedans in the US are 66%–70% lower than gasoline vehicles, depending on the average carbon intensity of the electricity grid. For SUVs, the ICCT estimates that the emissions are 71%–74% lower than gasoline vehicles, depending on the same conditions.
EVs have no tailpipe emissions. However, generating the electricity used to charge EVs may create carbon pollution. The amount varies based on how local power is generated, whether using coal or natural gas, which emit carbon pollution, versus renewable resources like wind or solar, which do not.
A significant advantage of EVs compared to gasoline vehicles is their energy efficiency. EVs use about 90% of the energy from the battery and regenerative braking to propel the car. Gasoline vehicles only convert about 16–25% of the energy from gasoline into motion.
The production of electric cars is expected to become more efficient, and the production of electricity cleaner, according to the European Environment Agency. Every year, the life-cycle emissions of a typical EV could be cut by at least 73% by 2050, says the agency.
Nevertheless, it remains that—mainly because of the large battery—making an EV is more carbon-intensive than making an ICE car. Analysis by the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois suggests that manufacturing EVs produces about 60% more carbon emissions than making ICE cars. However, this carbon debt can be paid back swiftly.
“Essentially it takes two to three years, and then you have accounted for the climate debt that the car came with,” says Fredrika Klarén, Polestar’s head of sustainability.
“Our customers want sustainability solutions,” she adds. “They want to know they are purchasing from a company that takes responsibility. We don’t greenwash. I would love for customers to be even more picky and start using the carbon footprints we deliver to them. We want people to use our data in managing a carbon budget for themselves.”
