Is the electric car really the solution to pollute less?

Aurélien Fleurot, edited by Ugo Pascolo 6:19 am, November 3, 2021

In the midst of COP 26, ecology is more than ever in the foreground, and with it the reduction of CO2 emissions.

A desire that does not escape the automotive sector.

At the end of October in France, President Emmanuel Macron said in his France 2030 plan that he wanted the country to produce two million electric and hybrid vehicles within ten years.

More broadly, the European Commission published on July 14 its climate plan "Fit for 55" which proposes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the automotive sector by 55% compared to 1990 by 2030. To do so to achieve this, the preferred solution is electric.

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The "CO2 debt" of electric cars

But is this really the only solution? Yes if we only take into account the CO2 emissions on the road. On the other hand, a report from the Institut Montaigne shows that the answer is less obvious if we take into account the CO2 cost of building the vehicle, in particular its lithium battery. Producing an electric car, especially with the battery, is more expensive in CO2 than a thermal car. "When you buy an electric car, you start with a CO2 debt", confirms at the microphone of Europe 1 Diane Strauss, director of the France office of the NGO Transport & Environment. But the latter is fairly quickly reimbursed when driving in France. "It's amortized from 18,000 km, or about a year and a half of use for an average driver."

But the number of kilometers needed to repay this CO2 debt depends above all on the country in which you are driving: the lower the energy mix will be, the greater the CO2 savings will be.

It is therefore faster to repay in France than in Germany or Poland for example.

The situation should however improve in the coming years, at the same time as the development of the manufacture of batteries in Europe and the industrial recycling of metals.

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The importance of each country's energy mix

In the meantime, manufacturers are playing the electric game and respecting European regulations. This does not prevent a certain mistrust: "Let us make objective impact measurements and not dogmatic. It is not necessarily the same solution [that must be adopted] in all places of France", reminds the microphone from Europe 1 Claude Cham, honorary president of the FIEV, a federation that represents equipment manufacturers, often companies that work on several continents. "In addition, we should not focus on our own territory. There are countries that do not impose the same rules as us and that we will have to serve."

For the time being, the production of thermal engines continues, to the chagrin of certain NGOs which hope to see the end of it by 2030. For its part, France is pushing to keep plug-in hybrid models beyond 2035.