The impact of reducing carbon emission on the global automotive industry

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The impact of reducing carbon emission on the global automotive industry

Korthals, Jan Peter / Heuss, Ruth / Malorny, Christian

Climate change and CO2 reduction is acknowledged as one of the key challenges for the automotive industry for the years to come. The present paper analyzes all relevant technologies for CO2 reduction in terms of abatement potential and costs. It shows that the conventional ICE has still significant improvement potential and that the abatement potential of electric and hydrogen vehicles depends on the electricity generation source. Many of the analyzed abatement levers pay-off from a consumer perspective or will do in the future. Under the extreme assumption of an entirely rational consumer, overall CO2 emission in Europe could be reduced by more than 30% until 2030. First, the current emission baseline, defined as on the one hand total passenger car induced CO2-emissions in tons and on the other hand as the CO2 tank-to-wheel emissions in 2006 was determined. Secondly, the expected CO2 emissions for 2020 and 2030 under a frozen technology assumption were projected. Then, the different abatement levers to reduce CO2 emissions were evaluated in terms of abatement potential and cost. Finally, different scenarios about the possible future penetration rates of the abatement technologies were developed in an effort to estimate the overall potential of CO2 emissions abatement until 2030. The following abatement levers to reduce CO2 emissions were analyzed: improvements of the conventional gasoline and diesel ICE, full hybrid cars, electric vehicles, CNG vehicles, hydrogen cars (ICE and fuel cell cars), and biofuels.