22 Mark A. Delucchi and Timothy E.

Lipman

externality is an external cost. Private costs plus external costs, with adjustments for
noncosts transfers (see Section 4.6), constitute the social lifetime cost of the vehicle.
The production and use of motor vehicles and motor-vehicle infrastructure generates
a wide range of externalities: air pollution, climate change, the macroeconomic impacts
of dependence on unstable and expensive foreign oil, water pollution, noise, death and
injury and destruction from crashes, delay from congestion, habitat destruction, and
more. For a review of the external costs of transportation in the United States, see Ref
[1]. The substitution of an electric drivetrain for an internal combustion engine (ICE)
drivetrain can affect the external costs of motor-vehicle air pollution, climate change, oil
dependence, noise, and water pollution (which, as noted above, is why EVs are being
considered as alternatives to petroleum ICEVs.) Several studies, reviewed below, have
included at least some of these external costs as part of an analysis of the social lifetime
cost of advanced EVs.
In the following sections, we discuss component costs, nonenergy operating and
maintenance costs, energy costs, and external costs, for BEVs, PHEVs, and FCEVs. We
conclude each section and then the whole chapter with a general discussion of the
estimates.

2. LIFETIME COST OF BATTERY-ELECTRIC VEHICLES

2.1 Introduction
Of the advanced EV types examined here, BEVs have the longest history. In fact, BEVs
date back to the late 1800s. However, a modern series of vehicles was introduced by
various automakers in the 1980s and 1990s. Along with the introduction of vehicles such
as the General Motors EV-1, the Toyota RAV4-EV, and the Ford Ranger EV, a series
of battery EV cost studies were conducted to examine the commercial prospects of these
vehicles should they become further developed and reach higher volumes of production.
These include several studies conducted by us (Lipman and Delucchi) that form the early
basis for this assessment [2–5].
The introduction of BEVs in the 1990s was occurring as the California Air Resources
Board (CARB) was looking to battery technology as the leading near term path to
“zero-emission” vehicles (ZEVs). The term ZEV was used to describe vehicles that
produced no tailpipe emissions of regulated pollutants, ignoring pollution from the
power plants used to recharge EVs.
An important point with regard to the analysis of the potential manufacturing, retail,
and lifetime costs of BEVs is that the critical issue of battery cost and performance has
evolved greatly over the past 15 years and will continue to evolve for the foreseeable
future. In the early 1990s, the dominant battery technology was lead-acid, with inves-
tigations into other chemistries such as sodium–sulfur and zinc–bromine. By the mid-
1990s the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery chemistry emerged as a more attractive