EV vs Hybrids

Faced with growing shortages of batteries and battery materials for electric cars, a respected analytics company says these batteries would do more good for the environment when used in more hybrid vehicles instead fewer all-electric cars for the same amount of battery power.

Per kilowatt-hour of capacity, hybrids offer 14 times less harmful emissions than pure electric cars, according to the British analytics firm Emissions Analytics.

The company examined 153 cars, including 59 conventional hybrids, 7 soft hybrids, and 57 plug-in hybrids, and compared them to a theoretical electric car with a 60 kwh battery pack. This included Vehicles from Europe and the United States and has shown even greater benefits to drive on electricity in the United States than in Europe because gasoline cars in the United States are relatively less efficient than those in Europe.

The medium soft hybrid across Europe and the United States, with a 400 watt-hours battery, has saved nearly 30 grams per kilometre of CO2 emissions, or about 74 g/km per kilowatt-hour of battery.

Full hybrids reduce CO2 emissions, but also have much larger batteries with an average of 1.3 kWh. Each kilowatt hour of installed batteries represented only a reduction of about 51 grams per kilometre.

The Emissions Analytics report shows that plug-in hybrids that rely primarily on batteries in their daily driving cycle, such as the Chevrolet Volt, have saved the same amount of CO2 emissions as cars all-electric during their tests: 210 grams per kilometre. But they needed much smaller batteries, just over one-sixth of the size.

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