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Electric vehicles: literature review of technology costs and carbon emissions

This paper aims to inform the debate over how electric vehicle technology could fit into a lower-carbon 2020–2030 new vehicle fleet in Europe by collecting, analyzing, and aggregating the available research literature on the underlying technology costs and carbon emissions. It concentrates on the three electric propulsion systems: battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (HFCEVs). The authors project that the costs of all will decrease significantly between 2015 and 2030: PHEVs will achieve about a 50% cost reduction, compared with approximate cost reductions of 60% for BEVs and 70% for HFCEVs.