Why Electric Cars are the Future of Sustainable Transportation

Nissan’s Eco-Friendly Initiatives

Industry leaders like Nissan have provided an emissions report, and they include every type of environmentally friendly idea that they’re going after. Nissan boasts “the zero-emission Nissan LEAF, which emits no CO2 or other exhaust gases during operation, provides smooth, powerful acceleration, stable handling, and an exceptionally quiet ride.” Nissan and similar companies have made research and development a higher priority since the regulations and governmental goals were placed upon the industry. The effects of these regulations have yet to reach total fruition, yet they have had some impact on the environment.

For example, since it first went on the market, “the Nissan LEAF has reduced overall CO2 emissions worldwide by an estimated 529,149 tons.” Nissan is taking steps towards more sustainable practices. Selection recognized Nissan’s efforts based on the environmental philosophy of “a Symbiosis of People, Vehicles, and Nature” not only to reduce CO2 emissions from its corporate activities but also to reduce “well-to-wheel” CO2 emissions from new vehicles by 90% by the year 2050 (compared with levels from 2000). Nissan wants to do this through quick chargers, which can charge batteries from a minimum charge up to 80% capacity in around 30 minutes. These battery chargers will be a key part of the infrastructure needed for the widespread adoption of quick chargers. People need to have a reason to drive an electric car, and these electric cars will give the reason for not only environmental soundness but convenience. If Nissan were able to release a station at every airport, people would not need to waste time at a gas station, and they could park and plug in their own cars while they were away from their cars. Nissan has been working on making a non-emission society a reality through its quick chargers. Nissan launched its quick chargers in 2011, and in the following year, the company improved them to make chargers quieter and the connector easier to use, as well as enabling on-the-spot payment. Nissan produced them until November 2015, providing global hardware support for charging infrastructure.

Nissan is also planning for the future through the sustainability of its current infrastructure. Since a large percentage of emissions come from production, industries are called to make use of what they have to spare the environment of more production-caused pollutants. Nissan is doing the most with what they have through a second life program.

Re-purposing Batteries and Infrastructure

Nissan is reusing the batteries in their cars to give their batteries and existing infrastructure a second or third life. After the cars are not of use to a customer, Nissan will take the battery from the car and reuse them for non-automotive use. This ensures that every piece of the battery can be used as much as possible so that more can be done with less.

Automotive Industry Sustainability Insights

Fuel efficiency has gone up 35 percent in the last 13 years. (2005-2018) Nissan has reduced carbon emissions by 23% in the corporate activities department over the last decade. Industry drives nations, and each industry can inherit knowledge from the mistakes and triumphs of the other. The purpose of this case study is to learn what the automotive industry has done to become sustainable in an ever-changing environment. This study is to provide the reader with some information about what supplies are available to airports to become more sustainable.
For example. Spain’s equivalent of the EPA, IDEA, indicates that 30 percent of emissions are caused by the automobile industry. Spain has since moved forward in this industry through the incorporation of new design philosophies to reduce emissions. Spain IDEA also promotes efficient driving as a way of reducing carbon emissions. The design philosophies to reduce emissions are electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, and vehicle weight reduction. Each design philosophy involves its own pros and cons. For example, hybrid cars produce 15% fewer lifecycle emissions than a standard gasoline vehicle, while purely battery electric vehicles produce 20% more emissions overall than standard. This number factors in production emissions as well as consumer emissions. Hybrid vehicles produce 20-40% more emissions in production than standard gasoline vehicles, yet they produce less emissions.
Electric cars are also improving their longevity. Battery-powered cars, according to Graph 1, produce the most emissions from the production of every type of vehicle (Gas, Hybrid, plug-in hybrid). This means that in order to even compete with other types of cars, electric cars must provide little to no emissions while being efficient enough to be useful to a consumer. Advances in car manufacturers have led designers from the Chalmers University of Technology to carbon fiber batteries. These batteries would be able to reduce the weight of a battery by up to 50 percent. The issue that the automotive industry falls into is expenses with production.

Magnesium Alloy and its Environmental Implications

Weight reduction is the “most cost-effective option for significantly decreasing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions” (Kulekci 2007). The automotive industry has researched Magnesium alloy in order to create a lighter, stronger vehicle. This alloy would replace aluminum in cars for it “. It has a good ductility, better noise and vibration dampening characteristics than aluminum and excellent castability.” (Kulekci 2007). This ensures that in every way, Magnesium is more environmentally friendly in post-production. Cars that use this alloy would be able to use less gas overall because of the workload that is reduced due to weight reduction. The increase in Mg use would also reduce the number of emissions and pollutants during production, for Mg is melted off of seawater.

This reduction of ore mined reduces the total amount of emissions caused by harmful mining in local environments. According to the International Aluminum Institute, four to six additional tons of resources are required to create one ton of aluminum. This whole step could be skipped if the industry shifts towards Mg production through the separation of seawater. Seawater contains .3% Mg and can be taken directly from the ocean. (Kulekci 2007) This lessens the number of cars and industrial machines working for the mines.

Towards the Future of Mobility

Sharing of vehicles, coupled with congestion charging, road pricing, parking constraints, and reducing road space for private vehicles, represents a huge opportunity to tackle urban congestion and pollution, as illustrated by recent modeling from the International Transport Forum (ITF), which suggests that more than 90% of cars could be removed from the road in Lisbon and Helsinki through ride-sharing.” “The first key development must be to accelerate the shift to electro-mobility. To meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, transport emissions must be reduced by more than 90% by 2050. Such a radical change cannot be achieved through incremental improvements to existing vehicles, a shift to fossil gas, or through advanced biofuels and synthetic fuels that cannot be produced in the volumes needed to power all mobility.

Future cars will be electric, chargeable in minutes with ranges of 500km, and powered by smart renewable grids. At present, the car industry is failing to provide adequate choice, constraining supply, not actively marketing or incentivizing showrooms to sell electric cars; therefore, regulation is essential to kick start the market.”

References

1. Kulekci, M.K. (2007). Magnesium and its alloys applications in automotive design.
2. Canals Casals, Lluc & García, Beatriz & Aguesse, Frederic & Iturrondobeitia, Amaia. (2015). Second life of electric vehicle batteries: relation between materials degradation and environmental impact. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment.
3. Rabiega W, Gorza?czy?ski A, Jeszke R, Mzyk P, Szczepa?ski K. How Long Will Combustion Vehicles Be Used? Polish Transport Sector on the Pathway to Climate Neutrality. Energies. 2021; 14(23):7871.

Did you like this example?

316

13