Life cycle environmental impact assessment for battery-powered electric vehicles at the global and regional levels.

As an important part of electric vehicles, lithium-ion battery packs will have a certain environmental impact in the use stage. To analyze the comprehensive environmental impact, 11 lithium-ion battery packs composed of different materials were selected as the research object. By introducing the life cycle assessment method and entropy weight method to quantify environmental load, a multilevel index evaluation system was established based on environmental battery characteristics. The results show that the Li-S battery is the cleanest battery in the use stage. In addition, in terms of power structure, when battery packs are used in China, the carbon footprint, ecological footprint, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, human toxicity cancer and human toxicity noncancer are much higher than those in the other four regions. Although the current power structure in China is not conducive to the sustainable development of electric vehicles, the optimization of the power structure is expected to make electric vehicles achieve clean driving in China.

The Chinese plug-in electric vehicles industry in post-COVID-19 era towards 2035: Where is the path to revival?

The sudden Coronavirus Disease reported at the end of 2019 (COVID-19) has brought huge pressure to Chinese Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) industry which is bearing heavy burden under the decreasing fiscal subsidy. If the epidemic continues to rage as the worst case, analysis based on System Dynamics Model (SDM) indicates that the whole PEVs industry in China may shrink by half compared with its originally expected level in 2035. To emerge from the recession, feasible industrial policies include (1) accelerating the construction of charging infrastructures, (2) mitigating the downtrend of financial assistance and (3) providing more traffic privilege for drivers. Extending the deadline of fiscal subsidy by only 2 years, which has been adopted by the Chinese central government, is demonstrated to achieve remarkable effect for the revival of PEVs market. By contrast, the time when providing best charging service or most traffic privilege to get the PEVs industry back to normal needs to be advanced by 10 years or earlier. For industrial policy makers, actively implementing the other two promoting measures on the basis of existing monetary support may be a more efficient strategy for Chinese PEVs market to revive from the shadow in post-COVID-19 era.