Polestar releases LCA reports for long-range and standard-range single-motor versions of Polestar 2 EV
09 September 2021
Polestar has released the LCA reports for the new Polestar 2 versions (Long-range Single-motor and Standard-range Single-motor), including all emissions from cradle to grave.
The company published an evaluation of the carbon footprint of the Long-range Dual-motor Polestar 2 in 2020. The new LCAs represent a continuation of that work; the two new Polestar 2 variants, “Long-range Single-motor” and “Standard-range Single-motor” are assessed and compared with the original Polestar 2 and with the internal combustion engine gasoline vehicle Volvo XC40 ICE.
Source: Polestar
The carbon footprint includes emissions from upstream supplier activities, manufacturing and logistics, use phase of the vehicle and the end-of-life phase. The functional unit chosen is “The use of a specific Polestar vehicle driving 200,000 km”.
The carbon footprint is 50-27 tonne CO₂e for the “Long-range Dual-motor”, 46-26 tonne CO₂e for the “Long-range Single-motor”, and 45-25 tonne CO₂e for “Standard-range Single-motor”.
The range in results is caused by differences in electricity mix scenarios, where the highest value reflects that a global electricity mix is used in the vehicle use phase while the lowest value reflects that wind power is used.
Compared with the XC40 ICE, all the Polestar 2 variants have a lower cradle-to-grave carbon footprint, spanning from a 14% reduction for “Long-range Dual-motor with global electricity mix” to 57% reduction for “Standard-range Single-motor with wind power”.
The number of kilometers needed to be driven to reach break-even for the Polestar 2 variants, compared with XC40 ICE changes with variant and electricity mix. “Standard-range Single motor” charged with wind power reaches break-even after 40,000 km, while “Long-range Dual-motor” charged with global electricity mix reaches break-even after 110,000 km.
Note that they are comparing to petrol, not diesel or gasoline hybrid, or PHEV.
Note that they call the low CO2 electricity "wind", but you only get wind say 35% of the time, so, IMO, that is a bit low.
Getting a single CO2 per kWh figure is difficult and it differs for every country and different times of the year (and day).
(They really need to do a few sample countries, say UK, France, Germany, Spain.)
Posted by: mahonj | 09 September 2021 at 02:42 AM
The EU mix figures they do give are a pretty reasonable compromise to offering figures by country.
I went through Polestar's original comparisons in some detail, and in my view they give honest figures.
But choosing a 'comparable ' ICE not only does not give hybrids and PHEVs a stab, but avoids things like much smaller cars, which are way more ecological and don't need the massive subsidies of big battery BEVs
Posted by: Davemart | 09 September 2021 at 05:53 AM