Comparison between Battery Electric Vehicles and Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles fueled by Electrofuels - From an energy efficiency and cost perspective

Abstract

Increasing the share of renewable energy used in the transport sector is seen as an important step to globally reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Battery electric vehicles have for a long time been seen as a solution if the electricity is produced by renewable sources, but still suffers from high battery costs and short range issues. As a way to overcome these issues and at the same time keep current car infrastructure, renewable electricity can be used to create synthetic fuels, denoted electrofuels, that are usable in already existing internal combustion engines. This study have investigated which of the two alternatives that would be preferable in different scenarios where both car size and driving pattern is compared. Individual car models have been created and used in different driving cycles to find the specific energy use. Investment and production costs related to electrofuel manufacturing have been estimated to find total cost and energy use. The results show that the BEV is more energy efficient in all investigated scenarios while, however, using electrofuels can in most driving conditions be a more economic solution. A large scale implementation of electrofuels indicate a tremendous increase in electricity demand, where for example 30-93% (depending on fuel type, car size and driving cycle) of the Swedish power production would be needed to be able to produce electrofuels for the entire Swedish passenger car fleet.