3. The main conclusions of the LCA of the electric vehicle

3.1 Weight of production

The first notable difference between the LCA results for an electric vehicle and those for a combustion-powered vehicle concerns the distribution of impacts along the life cycle: whereas for a combustion-powered vehicle, around 80% of impacts occur in the use phase, for an electric vehicle, the manufacturing phase – vehicle and batteries – contributes over 50% of the total impact. Figure 2 shows the breakdown of the contribution of the various life cycle phases to climate change for the electric vehicle (EV, left) and...