Volvo says its EX30 has 60% lower life cycle emissions than a petrol XC40

A common EV myth (comprehensively debunked many times: examples here and here) goes along the lines of ‘EVs use so much energy in production of the battery that they don’t offer a real climate solution’.

The facts are that an EV repays that debt as compared to an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle relatively quickly. Plus, from then on it produces less climate damaging pollution than said ICE vehicle – even when run exclusively on grid sourced electricity.

On top of this, emissions attributable to running an EV decrease with an increasingly ‘green’ grid, unlike a fossil fuelled vehicle.

On the other hand, discussing cradle-to-grave emissions for products is something we should consider whenever buying anything – although it is a very hard thing to do properly.

To that end, Volvo are committed to accompanying the release of each battery electric vehicle (BEV) with a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of its carbon footprint.

Based on the life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology in the ISO 14067 standard, Volvo’s report focuses on the cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and global warming potential (GWP) over a driving distance of 200,000 kilometres.

This resulted in a total carbon footprint of 23 tonnes per 200,000 km, which is approximately 60 per cent less than a petrol powered XC40.

Overall, the LCA of the Volvo EX30’s carbon footprint ranges from 0.11 to 0.18 kg CO₂-eq/km (22 to 36 tonnes of CO₂-eq per 200,000 km) for the NMC equipped model and 0.089 to 0.16 kg CO₂-eq/km (18 to 31 tonnes of CO₂-eq per 200,000 km) for the LFP-equipped model, meaning the LFP-equipped model has a 16 per cent lower carbon footprint than the NMC-equipped model.

The report went on to make the point that the electricity source significantly impacts the car’s carbon footprint with wind-generated electricity significantly reducing the car’s carbon footprint as compared to global or European electricity mixes.

Volvo plans to better these numbers in coming years.

By 2025, their battery suppliers expect to reduce emissions from manufacturing the LFP battery by 20 per cent (and 46 per cent in the case of the NMC battery) through replacing electricity usage during cell manufacturing with renewable energy sources, increasing the share of recycled content in their materials and reducing their supply chain emissions.

It is also worth noting that the emissions per kilometre are dependent on the overall life of the car.

Whilst picking the industry accepted number of 200,000 km as the lifetime distance for a vehicle, Volvo argue in the report that larger personal vehicles commonly travel further than this in their lifetimes. If the distance is changed to 300,000km – then the CO₂-eq/km drops by around a third to 0.11.