Today’s accelerating shift from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric alternatives provides an essential path to decarbonization but requires retooling of the auto industry, rapid expansion and updating of the electric grid, and creation of new, secure mineral supply chains. In this paper, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and EPRI explore the fundamental role that future vehicle efficiency improvements—additional and complementary to electrification—can play in lessening infrastructure and energy needs and reducing consumer costs. Electrification by itself brings major energy savings and other benefits, but the additional and often-overlooked improvements considered here reduce the amount of electricity needed to power vehicles, which is projected to be a large future load. This study characterizes key automotive technology advances and examines their potential impacts from the perspective of consumers, electricity and charging infrastructure providers, and automakers. Efficiency and lightweighting steps could effectively cut energy consumption per mile in half over the next 30 years. If these steps are achieved without raising vehicle costs, the study projects consumer energy cost savings of more than $200 billion annually for on-road transportation traveled by 2050, including reduced investments in the physical grid and charger buildout needed to support the shift towards electric mobility. Further work is suggested to examine in more detail the cost of the proposed vehicle efficiency strategies, to estimate the supply chain benefits of getting more miles from less battery material, and to conduct a broader assessment of additional ways that more efficient vehicles can contribute to consumer, automaker, and grid value.
Authors Geoffrey J. Blanford and Thomas F. Wilson