An electric car must drive 200,000 km to compensate for its carbon deficit
“This is the first time that a continent has decided to give up its sovereignty, that an industry has been hara-kiri”, says Luc Chatel. “Within five years, the effects are unimaginable.” It is in these terms that the president of the Automotive Platform (PFA) representing the tricolor auto sector qualified the vote of the European Parliament, on June 8, in favor of the ban on thermal vehicles for sale in 2035. And this, while the European Council should ratify this prohibition at the end of June. During a round table devoted to the “Energy transition, from one dependency to another?” this Wednesday in Paris, Luc Chatel recalled that it would take “hundreds of billions of euros of investment to take this turn”, which can be… fatal to European sovereignty.
This electrification will indeed “multiply the production of batteries by eleven between 2021 and 2030, the needs for cobalt by six, lithium by eleven, nickel by twelve”. Because, to obey Brussels, electric and rechargeable hybrids should “represent 38% of new vehicle sales in Europe in 2025, 70% in 2030 and electric 100% in 2035”. However, “China controls 75% of the battery production chain, 50% of the value of an electric model”.
China refines 80% of rare earths
China “controls 60% of rare earths and refines 80%”, adds Guillaume Pitron, journalist specializing in rare metals. “The ecological costs of extracting rare metals in China are colossal. There are 10,000 mines in all in China, which are totally irresponsible from an ecological point of view”. Europe, however, has “gigantic lithium deposits in Spain, Portugal, France, Austria, Finland”, recognizes Guillaume Pitron. But “there is an economic, energy, ecological cost. Europe will not be independent for lithium in the medium term”, he concludes.
And, ultimately “two-thirds of the large battery factories will still be located in China in 2030”, predicts Philippe Varin, ex-CEO of PSA, former president of France Industrie and author of a report on securing supplies. “We have more and more battery needs, and we have questions about Europe’s ability to keep pace with the installation of production capacities”, recently assured in more cautious terms Marc Mortureux, managing director of the PFA. Aggravating factor: this strategic dependence is intrinsically anti-ecological. “If we import nickel from Indonesia, we emit a lot of CO2 because the processing is done with coal energy. There is therefore a very important question of the carbon content of the supplies”, underlines Philippe Varin.
Given all these parameters, the latter estimates that an “electric vehicle must drive 200,000 km to compensate, from well to wheel, for its increased CO2 emissions compared to a thermal car”! The electric vehicle manufacturer Polestar (Volvo) rather judges this figure at 80,000 km on average in Europe. The total carbon footprint of a so-called zero-emission car is therefore debatable, as Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis, has repeatedly suggested, asking to take into account total emissions, the phase of extraction of rare metals entering the batteries until the said batteries are destroyed. CO2 emissions are currently only calculated during driving, without taking into account upstream and downstream.
