Webinar on how shared mobility impacts vehicle lifetimes and the carbon footprint of electric cars
Car sharing and autonomous vehicles have the potential to reduce CO2 emissions. But there are several factors to consider, such as driving intensity and vehicle lifetime, when estimating the carbon footprint of electric vehicles.
This was the topic for Mistra Carbon Exit’s most recent webinar, Impacts of shared mobility on vehicle lifetimes and the carbon footprint of electric vehicles. The researchers Johannes Morfeldt and Daniel Johansson, Chalmers University of Technology, presented their recent study exploring the impacts of shared mobility on driving intensity, vehicle lifetimes and the carbon footprint of electric vehicles.
Introducing shared cars could reduce the carbon footprint of the vehicle fleet. However, the carbon footprint depends on the cumulative driving distance and annual driving intensity as those factors affect the vehicles’ ageing.
Average lifetime
Swedish statistics from 2014-2018 show that a vehicle, on average, is retired after a cumulative driving distance of 216 000 kilometres. With an average driving intensity of 14 200 km a year, the average lifetime of a car is 16.3 years. A statistical analysis shows that the average vehicle lifetime decreases as the average annual driving intensity increases. This could be the case for shared cars, which are used more like current taxis than traditionally owned cars.
Empty travel
A takeaway from the study is that shared cars could decrease the carbon footprint by about 41 per cent in 2050, despite limiting vehicles’ lifetimes, if one shared vehicle replaces ten individually owned cars. But there is also a risk that empty travel increases with autonomous vehicles, which can reduce the possibility of enhancing the carbon footprint. Therefore, empty travel and vehicle durability should be considered when designing systems for car sharing.
More on the study by Johannes Morfeldt and Daniel Johansson can be found here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33666-2