Life cycle assessment · openLCA 2.5 · ecoinvent 3

Electric vs. petrol cars: when does the EV win?

A cradle-to-use life cycle assessment of a battery electric vehicle (BEV) and a petrol car (ICE), each driven 150,000 km over 12 years. The EV is charged on three very different grids: nuclear-heavy France, coal- and gas-heavy Germany, and mixed Hungary. All results come from ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (H).

Author Billriz CondorCourse Environmental Impacts of Energy (BME)Date November 2025

Explore the results Read the report (PDF) See the code

Lifetime impact by life-cycle stage

Choose an impact category. Each bar splits one vehicle's lifetime impact into manufacturing and energy supply (fuel for the ICE, charging electricity for the EVs).

Impact category

View as table

The climate break-even point

The EV starts behind because building its battery adds emissions. Every kilometre on a cleaner energy source then closes the gap. The crossing point is where the EV has paid back its extra manufacturing emissions.

Distance driven 150,000 km

Manufacturing emissions happen at km 0. Energy-supply emissions are spread evenly over the distance driven, using each scenario's lifetime result divided by 150,000 km.

Better or worse than the petrol car?

Each EV's lifetime impact compared with the ICE in every ReCiPe category. ■ Blue means lower than the ICE (better); ■ red means higher (worse).

Key findings

The grid decides the result.Charged on France's low-carbon grid, the EV emits 78% less CO₂-eq than the petrol car. On Germany's grid the cut is 54%.

Manufacturing is the EV's weak spot.Car and battery production account for about 90% of the EV's climate impact in France, and they raise its mineral resource use above the ICE's.

Nuclear shifts the burden.France's nuclear-heavy mix scores lowest on climate but highest on ionizing radiation, a trade-off for policy to weigh.

Fuel dominates the ICE.Fuel supply and combustion make up 86% of the petrol car's lifetime CO₂-eq, so no ICE scenario comes close to the EVs.

Model assumptions

Baseline parameters (Del Duce, Gauch & Althaus, 2016), modelled in openLCA 2.5 with ecoinvent 3 cut-off data. The system boundary is cradle to use phase; end of life is excluded.

Parameter	Value	Unit
Car lifetime	12	years
Lifetime distance	150,000	km
Battery capacity	60	kWh
Battery mass per kWh	6	kg/kWh
BEV energy use	18	kWh / 100 km
Charging efficiency	90	%
ICE fuel use	6.5	L / 100 km
Car mass	1,500	kg

How it's calculated

This Python script reads the openLCA exports in Results/, splits each result into life-cycle stages, checks that the stages add back up to the totals, and writes the JSON this page uses.

analysis/build_results.pyOpen on GitHub →

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