The private and social cost of the electric car: a comparison between models of different car market segments

The Directive CE n.443/2009 has forced car manufactures to supply Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs), Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) and Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the Italian car market. This paper aims to estimate the economical sustainability of these “alternative” powertrains by a Decision Support Model (DSM) approach. A case study reports the DSM private and social costs estimations for 39 car models belonging to different Italian market segments. The private cost assessment evidences that gasoline HEVs, diesel HEVs, PHEVs and EVs are still not competitive with “conventional” powertrains: EVs are the optimal solution only in the case of intensive mobility patterns (10 years of use and more than 20,000 kilometres per year driven). The study results are in line with the Italian market shares of 1.6% for the HEVs and the 0.1% for the EVs in the first 10 months of 2015. The social sustainability assessment on a fuel lifecycle basis (Well-to-Wheels assessment) evidences that a Public Authority’s subsidy should be justified for gasoline HEVs, diesel HEVs, PHEVs and EVs in an amount equal to the social cost difference in respect to the gasoline and diesel ones. The DSM estimations show that EVs have the highest potential in reducing global and local air pollutants emissions and noise: the social cost benefits range between 595€ to 2,976€ in respect to gasoline cars while between 483€ to 2,417€ in respect to diesel ones, depending on the mobility pattern (5,000 – 25,000 km/year driven, 10 years of usage).