Environmental Risk Assessment of Lithium Battery Electric Cars

Over the last decade, the electrification of mobility is discussed as one of the key strategies for heading towards a more sustainable transport system. Electric vehicles (EVs) are considered as an important means to reduce local air pollution, noise pollution, global greenhouse gas emissions from the transport. Moreover, electric vehicles are seen as an important contributor to higher energy supply security through the reduction of oil import dependency. Due to this, many governments have set goals to increase number of electric vehicles offering a broad portfolio of supporting policy measures. Furthermore, according to the Paris Declaration global electric vehicles stock should be over 100 million by 2030. Different types of electric vehicles are already available on the market especially in China, Europe and the USA, see Fig 1. Until now, market penetration of electric vehicles was very slow mostly due to their high capital costs and limited driving range in comparison to conventional internal combustion vehicles. However, battery performances has been considerably improved, and price has been significantly reduced over the last years, so that market penetration in the next years could be much faster. The core objective of this paper is to investigate the environmental risks associated with the increasing use of lithium battery electric vehicles.