Combined with driving-related emissions, the french study reaches the following tally:

With 23 tons of CO2e, the small petrol car has a climate change footprint 21% higher than the the small diesel car (19 tons). The compact electric car, powered mostly by french nuclear power (83 g CO2e/kWh) comes out significantly ahead.

If the working assumptions are adjusted by:
– doubling the battery capacity to 48 kWh to reflect consumer range expectations
– using german electricity with a 7.7x higher CO2e footprint,
the result becomes:

The climate footprint of a battery electric vehicle (BEV) can easily triple depending on the capacity of its battery pack and the source of the electricity used to charge it. This does not make a BEV worse than a petrol car from a climate impact viewpoint, but it does not make it better either, and certainly does not qualify as clean. One will note that the absolute figures are very comparable to the british study, with figures above 20 tons of CO2e over a 150’000 km lifecycle.

The american study

The study of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is more recent  and focuses on the comparison of the climate footprint of two passenger car categories, each with petrol and BEV alternatives:
– A 24 kWh Nissan Leaf achieving 186 Wh/km
– A 1362 kg compact petrol car achieving 29 MPG i.e. 8.1 L/100km, for instance a Ford Focus, Mazda 3 or VW Golf
– A Tesla Model S 85 kWh achieving 236 Wh/km
– A 1952 kg full size sedan achieving 21 MPG i.e. 11.2 L/100km.

Lifecycle impact for the compact cars is assessed over 135’000 miles (217’000 km), and 179’000 miles (288’000 km) for sedans.

With 8.8 tons of CO2e for the same Nissan Leaf, the american model estimates the manufacturing footprint at 9 tons, a level comparable with the british study, but 28% higher than the french study. The Tesla Model S 85 kWh is estimated at 15.2 tons of CO2e, including 5.4 tons for the battery pack.