Abstract
Hundreds of gigawatt-hours of lithium-ion batteries are being produced and installed on electric vehicles globally every year, causing considerable environmental and resources consequences. Understanding the driving factors behind battery installation is critical to propose co** strategies. In this study, we analyze China's electric passenger vehicles as an example. We decompose annual battery installation into vehicle sales, electric range, and energy consumption rate. We then investigate their impact on battery installation using a logarithmic mean Divisia index approach. The results show that vehicle sales were the dominating influencing factor, responsible for over 60% of yearly battery installation increase in most years since 2015. Vehicle electric range has largely evolved to be longer, imposing a positive influence on battery installation. Energy consumption rate was the only factor that has inhibited battery installation, but far from offsetting the impacts from the other two factors. The analysis suggests that to suppress over-growth of battery installation in the decades to come, managing electric range could serve as the major co** measure. In particular, stronger policy efforts should be targeted at limiting the electric range of large vehicles.
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Acknowledgements
This study is sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72122010, 71774100), National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFC1908501).
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YD contributed to conceptualization, methodology, investigation, and writing—original draft. HH contributed to methodology, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition, and supervision. CJ involved in investigation and data processing.
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Deng, Y., Hao, H. & Jia, C. Exploring the potential of cutting battery use in electric vehicles. Clean Techn Environ Policy 26, 367–379 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-023-02634-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-023-02634-9