Clean Electro-mobility Solutions Only Using Green Energy Input

The utilization of electrical cars is considered as the new tool against the serious problems resulting from the oil products consumption of the transportation sector. Actually, many people believe that the adoption of electro-mobility, especially in the urban areas or small-medium size islands, is the only solution for significant reduction of the environmental impacts of our society. In this context the current work first estimates the real world electricity consumption of commercial electrical cars, including charging and discharging loss, using long term experimental measurements. Accordingly, on the basis of the total electricity consumption and using the electricity generation fuel mix (mainland vs. remote islands) the corresponding air pollutants are predicted. On the other hand, one may estimate the air pollutants emissions of the contemporary private cars using experimental measurements and data provided by the cars’ manufacturers and other external accreditation bodies. For this purpose several internal combustion engine-based cars are analyzed according to the technology used. Moreover the engine size and the year of construction are also embodied in the proposed analysis. According to the results obtained one may clearly state that the current electrical cars may surcharge the environment by higher volume of pollutants than the corresponding ICE-based ones, especially when coal-based and oil-based electricity is used to charge the batteries of the electrical car. Recapitulating, in order to improve the air quality of our environment and minimize the transportation sector impact on the climate change it is more than necessary to avoid the utilization of fossil fuels for providing electricity at the EVs charging point. On the contrary, only by using renewable energy sources (wind/solar/hydro potential/geothermy, etc.) to charge batteries of EVs it is evident that the environmental impact -due to air pollution- of electrical cars is minimal.