Sensitivity of battery electric vehicle economics to drive patterns, vehicle range, and charge strategies

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) offer the potential to reduce both oil imports and greenhouse gas emissions, but high upfront costs discourage many potential purchasers. Making an economic comparison with conventional alternatives is complicated in part by strong sensitivity to drive patterns, vehicle range, and charge strategies that affect vehicle utilization and battery wear. Identifying justifiable battery replacement schedules and sufficiently accounting for the limited range of a BEV add further complexity to the issue. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory developed the Battery Ownership Model to address these and related questions. The Battery Ownership Model is applied here to examine the sensitivity of BEV economics to drive patterns, vehicle range, and charge strategies when a high-fidelity battery degradation model, financially justified battery replacement schedules, and two different means of accounting for a BEV's unachievable vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are employed. We find that the value of unachievable VMT with a BEV has a strong impact on the cost-optimal range, charge strategy, and battery replacement schedule; that the overall cost competitiveness of a BEV is highly sensitive to vehicle-specific drive patterns; and that common cross-sectional drive patterns do not provide consistent representation of the relative cost of a BEV.

► Detailed BEV economics modeling and comparison to the cost of conventional vehicles.
► Considers real-world drive patterns, battery wear, battery replacement, and a BEV's unachievable VMT.
► The cost of a BEV's unachievable VMT has a large impact on economics and ideal operational strategies.
► Driver- or vehicle-specific usage patterns are necessary for accurate economic analyses.
► Battery replacements are rarely justified economically, even with very low battery prices.