Effects of Different Shares of Electric Vehicles in Cities on Global CO2 Emissions: A Microsimulation-Based Analysis

In the last decades, greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide (CO2), produced by internal-combustion-engine (ICE) vehicles, have shown to be a major concern of our society. Over the time, electric vehicles have attracted considerable attention, since they are highly energy efficient and produce less local emissions. In this work, by means of a large-scale microscopic model of the city of Munich, effects of different shares of electric vehicles on the cities global CO2 emissions are investigated. In addition to the microscopic models for fuel consumption and CO2 emission for ICE vehicles, an energy consumption model for EVs is developed and integrated into the microsimulation tool. The contribution of this paper is that a comparative framework with macroscopic emission modeling is developed in which various scenarios for different shares of electric vehicles compared to an ICE vehicle fleet are considered. The results show that fuel consumption rate and emission factors in the microscopic approach are approximately 15% higher than the macroscopic case. This is mainly due to taking the exact driving behavior and traffic condition into account. In addition, it is shown that by using regenerative braking systems within the electric vehicles, about 25% energy saving is obtained.