Energy Sources Management and Future Automotive Technologies: Environmental Impact

The paper presents the environmental impact created through the introduction of introducing new technologies in transportation domain. New electric vehicles are considered zero-emission vehicles (ZEV). However, electricity produced in power plants is still predominantly based on fossil fuel usage (required for recharge electric vehicle batteries) and thus directly affects the quantity of pollutant emissions and greenhouse gases (CO2, NOx and SOx). Given the structure of EU-wide energy sources used for electricity generation, the potential pollutant emissions stemming from these energy sources, related to energy consumption of an electric vehicle, was determined under the projected environmental impact of specific market penetration of electric vehicles. In addition to the overall impact at the EU level, were identified the countries for which the use of electric vehicles is (or not) feasible in terms of reaching the lower values of future emissions compared to the present and future European standards.