Private versus Shared, Automated Electric Vehicles for U.S. Personal Mobility: Energy Use, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Grid Integration, and Cost Impacts
Open accessAbstract
Transportation is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption globally. While the convergence of shared mobility, vehicle automation, and electrification has the potential to drastically reduce transportation impacts, it requires careful integration with rapidly evolving electricity systems. Here, we examine these interactions using a U.S.-wide simulation framework encompassing private electric vehicles (EVs), shared automated EVs (SAEVs), charging infrastructure, controlled EV charging, and a grid economic dispatch model to simulate personal mobility exclusively using EVs. We find that private EVs with uncontrolled charging would reduce GHG emissions by 46% compared to gasoline vehicles. Private EVs with fleetwide controlled charging would achieve a 49% reduction in emissions from baseline and reduce peak charging demand by 53% from the uncontrolled scenario. We also find that an SAEV fleet 9% the size of today's active vehicle fleet can satisfy trip demand with only 2.6 million chargers (0.2 per EV). Such an SAEV fleet would achieve a 70% reduction in GHG emissions at 41% of the lifecycle cost as a private EV fleet with controlled charging. The emissions and cost advantage of SAEVs is primarily due to reduced vehicle manufacturing compared with private EVs.
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A fleet of shared automated electric vehicles could reduce GHG emissions by 70% while creating significant cost savings.
“It is estimated that such a fleet could reduce GHG emissions by 70% while creating significant cost savings [100].”
From A National and Regional Greenhouse Gas Breakeven Assessment of EVs across North America (2023) · cites this paper as [100]
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A National and Regional Greenhouse Gas Breakeven Assessment of EVs across North America
Rasbash, D., Dillman, K. J., Heinonen, J., & Ásgeirsson, E. I. (2023) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su15032181 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
- Authors
- Sheppard, C. J. R., Jenn, A. T., Greenblatt, J. B., Bauer, G. S., & Gerke, B. F.
- Affiliations
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US)
- International Council on Clean Transportation (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Sheppard, Colin J. R.
- Venue
- Environmental Science & Technology
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2021-02-10
- Volume
- 55
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 3229-3239
- ISSN
- 0013-936X (ISSN-L)
- 1520-5851
- OpenAlex
- W3128808352
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 4
- FWCI
- 1.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Environmental Science & Technology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Vehicle Technologies Program (DE-AC02-05CH11231)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Electric Vehicles and Infrastructure
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Automotive Engineering › Transportation and Mobility Innovations
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Automotive Engineering › Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Technologies
- Keywords
- personal mobility, greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, charging infrastructure, grid integration, economic dispatch, life cycle cost, vehicle manufacturing, shared mobility, vehicle automation, electrification, transportation energy use
- MeSH terms
- Greenhouse Gases, Vehicle Emissions, Electricity, Gasoline, Motor Vehicles
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