Sizing up sustainability: Influence of battery size and cell chemistry on battery-electric trucks’ life-cycle carbon emissions

Abstract

Customers and legislators will increasingly demand monitoring and reducing the carbon footprint of logistic companies in the coming years. Besides the fundamental decision for a battery-electric truck, the choice of battery size and cell chemistry should be approached with the goal of minimizing the carbon footprint of the supply chain. Therefore, this paper analyzes the impact of battery size and cell chemistry on the carbon footprint and which factors influence this the most. To quantify this footprint, emissions from production, potential replacements based on battery aging, energy generation, and reuse in second-life applications for both LFP and NMC cell chemistries are considered. The results show that use phase emissions from energy generation have the largest leverage on life-cycle emissions, whereas production emissions play a minor role. If electricity with lower emissions at the home depot compared to the public electricity is available, oversizing the battery capacity tends to be the emission optimal choice. If more than 8% additional renewable energy at the home base for NMC and more than 38% for LFP is available, the largest possible battery is emission-optimal. For smaller shares, the smallest possible battery should be selected. Significant dependence on purchase year and share of second-life usage can be observed.

Keywords

• carbon emission analysis
• prospective LCA
• battery sizing
• cell chemistry
• battery-electric truck