Carbon footprint comparison analysis of passenger car segment electric and ICE propelled vehicles in Kuwait

Abstract

Considering the decrease in the fossil-fuel reserves and environmental drawbacks of internal combustion engine (ICE) propelled vehicles, the usage of alternative prime movers such as electric vehicles (EVs) has gained significant potential in the last decades. Battery electric vehicles (BEVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are a few currently available examples of vehicle electrification. EVs have zero in-use emissions, however, depending on the region to be operated, well-to-wheel (WTW) emissions need to be considered for a realistic carbon footprint effect considering global warming (GW) analysis. Especially, considering the countries where the usage of renewable energy (RE) sources is extremely limited, such as Kuwait and other GCC countries, the benefit of EVs significantly decreases. Within this perspective in this study, an inclusive CO2 emissions analysis for two passenger segment vehicles with different prime movers are analyzed: ICE and electric motor (EM). Longitudinal vehicle models were developed via MATLAB/Simulink software for both prime mover configurations which are capable of simulating the fuel/energy consumption using Toyota Camry and Lexus UX 300e vehicles. The generated CO2 emissions by the two prime movers were compared using the previously generated Kuwait driving cycle (Kuwait DC). The results indicated that the use of BEVs generate fewer CO2 emissions nearly half the amount of what ICE propelled vehicles generate.