Conventional and electric vehicles: A complete economic and environmental comparison

Automotive sector is one of the main sectors in terms of fuel consumption and environmental damage (pollutant air emissions). A great number of studies has been conducted in recent years on the convenience of a migration from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles, with different approaches and assumptions and, generally, different conclusions. It is difficult, therefore, to make full use of these conclusions, especially for non-expert policy community. This paper proposes a simple but complete methodology to evaluate unitary operating cost of electric and conventional drive vehicles (ICE - internal combustion engine vehicle) in order to provide a repeatable comparison referring to main scenarios representative of realistic contexts. In detail, the comparison is based on a optimization mathematical procedure, which includes economic and environmental indicators, to evaluate operating cost of the vehicles.