ACEEE report: Producing highly efficient EVs will provide numerous cost-saving benefits

Making average electric vehicles (EVs) as efficient as their higher-performing competitors can reduce the upfront cost of an EV by almost $5,000 and cut charging costs by nearly a third, according to new research released Aug. 20 by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

At the same time, improving the efficiency of a 300-mile-range EV can give it the same range with much smaller batteries, also significantly cutting costs, according to the ACEEE report.

“We have made huge gains in the efficiency of gasoline-powered cars, and we must do the same for EVs to lower costs and cut pollution,” said Peter Huether, lead author of the report and senior transportation research associate at ACEEE. “Manufacturing more affordable EVs that use less critical mineral material for batteries means we can produce more EVs and speed the transition away from cars that burn fossil fuels.”

According to Huether’s research, many EVs on the road today travel about 2.5 miles for each kilowatt hour of electricity stored in the battery. The best-selling EV in America, the Tesla Model Y, travels 3.5 miles per kilowatt hour (mi/kWh), a 40 percent increase. At today’s battery prices, reducing the size of a battery by 40 percent while maintaining the same range translates into a $4,800 savings, the report says.

And while the Model Y is among the more efficient EVs on the road today, the report notes that others achieve even greater distances per kWh due to better efficiency.

For example, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 can travel 4.2 mi/kWh, and the Lucid Air Pure is the first EV to achieve 5 mi/kWh. At the other end of the spectrum, the inefficient 9,000-pound GMC Hummer EV gets only 1.4 mi/kWh.

To improve EV efficiency, automakers can improve battery performance, reduce vehicle weight, enhance aerodynamics, and use the latest technologies, such as optimized powertrains, states the report.

Additionally, by eliminating the need for gasoline, EVs dramatically reduce driving costs — and Huether found that more efficient EVs can lower them even further.

For instance, the average cost to fuel a car with gasoline is about $2,000 a year. For an EV with mediocre efficiency (2.5 mi/kWh), charging costs average about $960 annually. For a more efficient EV (3.5 mi/kWh), charging costs drop to $680 a year, a 29-percent savings.

Efficient EVs help address range anxiety, strain on the power grid, and pollution, as well, the ACEEE report says. For example, the only way to increase range without improving efficiency is with larger batteries, which adds cost while decreasing efficiency due to the added weight, Huether writes.

The report also found that widespread vehicle electrification will require significant investments in the electric grid and making EVs more efficient will lessen that strain and reduce electricity system costs.

A 40-percent more efficient EV also would significantly reduce carbon emissions and pollutants that directly damage human health, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter.

“Though EVs can contribute to emissions upstream from the electricity they use, these emissions are far less than those from gasoline-powered vehicles, which come from both combustion in the engine and emissions from oil drilling and gasoline refining,” the report says.

Federal, state, and local governments can encourage more efficient EVs, the report notes, by enacting policies like those in Oklahoma and Washington, D.C., which have set EV registration fees based on vehicle weight.

The paper also calls for expanding federally supported research on improving battery energy density, which can reduce battery weight without sacrificing energy storage.

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