Impacts of Near-future Changes in Vehicles

Cities will be transformed by changes in motor vehicles. The key changes in the car of the near future are:

• Power source. More vehicles will be powered by electricity instead of petroleum.

• Ownership. More vehicles will be shared rather than owned by single individuals.

• Autonomy. More vehicles will operate with little or no effort by a driver.

Electrification of Vehicles

Only 1 percent of the world’s 90 million vehicles produced and sold in 2018 were powered by electricity. That figure was set to increase rapidly in the 2020s. Several countries have banned the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles beginning in 2030 or 2040. Countries that still permit gasoline-powered vehicles have set high fuel efficiency standards that can only be met if electric vehicles account for a large share of sales. Several varieties of electrification exist:

U.S. Fuel Efficiency Standards

If these standards are met, they would nearly double the fuel economy of cars and trucks compared with 1970s levels.

Plug-in Hybrid

In a plug-in hybrid, the battery supplies the power at all speeds. It can be recharged in one of two ways: While the car is moving, the battery can be recharged by a gas engine or, when it is parked, the car can be recharged by plugging into an electrical outlet. Using a gas engine to recharge the battery extends the range of the plug-in hybrid to that of a conventional gas engine.

Full Electric with Lithium Ion Battery

A full electric vehicle has no gas engine. When the battery is discharged, the vehicle will not run until the battery is recharged by plugging it into an outlet. In large cities, a number of downtown garages and shopping malls have recharging stations, though few exist yet in rural areas. Carmakers are addressing the challenges of worn-out lithium ion batteries in a variety of ways.

Reusing Batteries from Electric Cars 

Companies have found a variety of uses for batteries that are no longer capable of powering a car.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell

Hydrogen forced through a PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane or proton exchange membrane) can be combined with oxygen from the air to produce an electric charge. The electricity can then be used to power an electric motor. Fuel cell vehicles are being used in a handful of large East Coast and West Coast cities, where hydrogen fueling stations have been constructed.

Electricity & Pollution

What will it take for the world to reduce pollution and fossil fuel dependency in the years ahead? According to the United Nations, strategies will vary among countries. The U.S. scientists working with the U.N. offered a strategy with three key elements:

• Sharp decrease in the use of the three fossil fuels.

• Increase in the use of renewable energy.

• Use of carbon capture and storage (CCS), a process that involves capturing waste CO2, transporting it to a storage site, and depositing it where it will not enter the atmosphere, normally underground.

U.N. Target for CO2 Emissions Reduction in the United States

The principal source of reduction would be through decreased use of fossil fuels.

The principal impact of a shift away from fossil fuels on the average American would be reliance on electricity for nearly all household activities and transportation. This electricity would be generated almost exclusively through sources other than the three fossil fuels.

As hard as it will be for the United States to reduce its carbon footprint, the challenge is even greater for developing countries, especially China, which is now the world’s leading manufacturing country. International cooperation and coordination will be required to reduce global pollution.

Share of Emissions and Population

(a) East Asia, especially China, is responsible for the largest share of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. (b) East Asia and North America generate higher percentages of carbon dioxide emissions than their share of the world’s population.

Pause & Reflect 13.4.4

What is happening in or near your community to reduce generation of electricity through fossil fuels?

Electric-powered vehicles require recharging by being plugged into a source of electricity such as an outlet in the garage. The source of that electricity may or may not be sustainable. Though fossil fuel is not being pumped directly into the tank of the electric-powered vehicle, fossil fuel may be consumed to generate the electricity at the power plant. In fact, the United States as a whole generated around 27 percent of its electricity from coal-burning power plants and around 35 percent from natural gas in 2018. An electric vehicle does reduce consumption of an increasingly scarce and expensive resource—petroleum. But if the electricity is generated by natural gas, then plugging a vehicle into the electric grid may conserve petroleum at the expense of more rapid depletion of natural gas. If electricity is generated by coal, a plug-in may cause more air pollution.

Electricity is generated differently across the 50 U.S. states. In the Pacific Northwest, where hydroelectric is the leading source of electricity, recharging electric vehicles will have much less impact on air quality than will be the case in the Midwest. States that depend on farm production may benefit from increased use of ethanol. Thus, the “greenest” alternative varies by location.

Electricity by U.S. State