Environmental and Economic Comparison of ICEV and EV in Car Sharing

Transport electrification is increasingly seen as a necessary action to curb climate change. Free floating car sharing (FFCS) is a transport mode whose real benefits and disadvantages are still largely discussed. Here we compare possible FFCS which adopt either internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) or electric vehicles (EV). We focus on three main aspects: satisfied demand, emission, and system profitability. We use a realistic simulator to thoroughly compare the different dynamics of ICEV and EV based FFCS systems. Our simulator models mobility demand, fleet status, refueling operations, and estimates the satisfied demand, determines the equivalent CO2 emission from the fuel production up to the fuel consumption, and computes operational profit. As case study we consider the city of Turin, where we compare 4 FFCS systems based on a fleet of Fiat 500 with different engines, i.e., gasoline, diesel, LPG, and electric. We run simulations using the demand as derived from trips recorded by the currently operational FFCS, and using the fueling infrastructures today present in the city. Results show that the EV FFCS system can satisfy the same demand as the ICEV based solutions. As expected, the EV fleet reduces emission. However, the current higher cost of EVs makes the FFCS system less profitable than ICEV solutions - questioning its adoption. Interestingly, cheap low-power chargers result the best solution for the EV FFCS, reducing also maintenance costs. We believe our approach and our simulator, which we make available for the community, is a first step to thoroughly compare the implications of different engines in shared mobility.