Electric Vehicles (EVs) are a promising technology for reducing the GHG emissions and other environmental impacts of road transport. It is important for EU policy makers to get an overview of the possible impacts of the introduction of Electric Vehicles. Therefore DG CLIMA commissioned CE Delft, ICF and Ecologic to carry out a study on the potential impacts of large scale market penetration of EVs in the EU, with a focus on passenger cars and light commercial vehicles. This study includes an assessment of both the transport part (e.g., composition of vehicle fleet) and electricity production and the impacts on well-to-wheel GHG emissions, pollutant emissions, other environmental impacts, costs, etc. This report is the first deliverable of this project and provides an overview of current market developments, i.e., mostly EVs coming to the market by 2011-12, but also covering vehicles up to 2015 as well as genuine show cars. The authors analysed 106 different passenger cars and a smaller number of non-passenger cars. The relatively limited data in the sample, together with the speculative nature of the topic and the fact that some of the vehicles are still announcements or prototypes of which some specifications might change in the coming year(s), results in a limited statistical robustness of the findings, calling for caution when drawing conclusions building on the analysis. Presently there is no clear indication for a real shift in terms of vehicle mass or design. The fact that the forecasted electric cars are on average not significantly heavier than today’s European cars implies either that the heavy battery weight will be compensated with weight reduction in other elements or that there will be more small cars in the market than currently. No fundamental shift in the short term towards light weight composite materials as in aircraft design could be observed. This may not hold true in the long term as composite materials may become market-ready in the future. (Author/publisher) This report may be accessed by Internet users at http://www.ce.nl/
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