Summary – I was invited to write an op-ed on electric vehicles for Mobil’is. Covering this topic in under 4000 words was not easy, but it was instructive. The piece let me restate three things: (i) it is impossible to get anywhere near carbon neutrality in transport without a massive deployment of electric vehicles and the near-disappearance of the internal combustion car; (ii) cutting emissions in the use phase is not enough — manufacturing emissions must come down too, through the decarbonisation of industry (steel, batteries, etc.). That is where we need hydrogen, to decarbonise steelmaking for instance. (iii) there is no silver bullet for mobility: we need to develop public transport, car sharing, light vehicles, cycling, and to rethink urban planning over the longer term.
Every year, driving our cars emits almost 100 million tonnes of greenhouse gases. That is not far off a quarter of all emissions in France. Other sectors such as agriculture or industry, and other modes of transport such as aviation, are harder to decarbonise than light vehicles, because the latter can benefit from the twofold advantage of direct electrification: an efficiency gain (energy use divided by two or three compared with an internal combustion engine) and the possibility of a low-carbon energy source. We can therefore aim, in the long run, at eliminating emissions from car use while keeping the associated electricity consumption reasonable. Going more than halfway there with the internal combustion engine is inconceivable, even with the best engineering or the strongest sufficiency efforts. Hydrogen can be produced with low-carbon electricity, but using it in light vehicles requires two to three times more electricity than direct electrification. Developing a hydrogen internal combustion engine would only make that balance worse. Biofuels and biogas are available in quantities far too limited to cover more than a small fraction of the demand, and will be more useful in other sectors where direct electrification is difficult.
But reducing use-phase emissions is not enough, because the car industry is itself a source of pollution, for example in steel production. For electric vehicles, battery manufacturing must be added to that. The technologies we deploy to reduce our emissions — electric vehicles, renewable generation — are often still manufactured using the industrial system of the past. We produce steel in blast furnaces with coal, and until recently batteries were produced using energy from polluting power plants in China. But giant battery plants, such as the one built by the Grenoble-based company Verkor, are now producing lithium-ion batteries in France and in Europe from electricity that is less carbon-intensive and that, within a few years, will emit almost no greenhouse gases at all. Blast furnaces will progressively be replaced by furnaces allowing the direct reduction of iron ore with low-carbon hydrogen.
There is no silver bullet for sustainable mobility, but the internal combustion engine is the worst of the options. Batteries force us to plan carefully for the supply of materials such as lithium and cobalt. The tensions ahead raise geopolitical questions, but environmental ones too. Alternatives are emerging, such as the French company Tiamat, which produces sodium-ion batteries. Yet while direct electrification is a necessity, environmental pressures show that it is not sufficient on its own. Local authorities have important work to do: putting in charging points, of course, but also acting on light mobility, public transport, cycle lanes, car-pooling and so on — it is our whole vision of transport that has to change. We also need a real recycling strategy, designed in from the start, for batteries but also for on-board electronics. In this materials economy, unlike in the oil era, reuse and recycling will be a key to sustainability, all the more so as electric drivetrains should allow our vehicles to last much longer. The ambition of carbon neutrality by 2050 is a necessity given the climate stakes; let us make sure it also becomes a source of future opportunities for our industry and a project to improve the places where we live.