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Electric vehicles in China: Emissions and health impacts

10am, April 19th, 2017

E-bikes in China are the single largest adoption of alternative fuel vehicles in history, with more than 100 million e-bikes purchased in the past decade and vehicle ownership about 2× larger for e-bikes as for conventional cars; e-car sales, too, are rapidly growing. This paper compares emissions (CO2, PM2.5, NOX, HC) and environmental health impacts (primary PM2.5) from the use of conventional vehicles (CVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) in 34 major cities in China. The paper finds that for most cities, the net result is that primary PM2.5 environmental health impacts per passenger-km are greater for e-cars than for gasoline cars (3.6× on average), lower than for diesel cars (2.5× on average), and equal to diesel buses. In contrast, e-bikes yield lower environmental health impacts per passenger-km than the three CVs investigated: gasoline cars (2×), diesel cars (10×), and diesel buses (5×).