A study aimed at assessing the potential impact of vehicle electrification on grid infrastructure and road-traffic green house emissions

• Modular computational structure for extensive analyses of car electrification impact.
• Simplified market model to assess the CO2 reduction potentialities of PEVs.
• Combining macro- with micro-level analyses of car electrification impact.
• Developing suitable methodologies to support energy planning for transportation.
• Worldwide analysis of electricity mix influence on CO2 reduction potential of electrified cars.

In the current paper a thorough analysis is conducted to assess, on one hand, the impact of vehicle electrification on electric grids and their related infrastructures, and, on the other, its potential contribution to GHG emission reduction. Such an analysis covers the timeframe 2011–2050, thus allowing to assess if the environment friendliness of both PHEV and BEV will be enough contributing, particularly towards the fulfillment of the objectives recently established both by official agreements among governments and research consortia (e.g. the International Energy Agency) as well. The expected time evolution of both PHEV and BEV private car fleets is modeled through a simplified market penetration model, along with the associated contribution in terms of well to tank and tank to wheel GHG emissions, thus providing the needed input data to the scenario analysis. Particularly, a longitudinal vehicle model is adopted to accurately estimate electric vehicle energy consumptions and related GHG emissions as a function of powertrain configuration, dimensions and mass.The analysis was run on several countries, thus providing useful outcomes to assess the suitability of given energy mix to fully exploit vehicle electrification. Such indications will therefore be useful to determine to which extent progressive decarbonization of current grids is required to meet the GHG reduction target by 2050.