Polestar
Swedish start-up of electric vehicles Polestar says it wants to build truly carbon-neutral vehicles within the next decade. The ambitious goal, announced Wednesday as part of the company’s first sustainability report, will require new car-building methods because, according to Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, ‘compensation is an outcome’.
“By striving to create a completely climate-neutral car, we are forced to go beyond what is possible today. We will have to question everything, innovate and explore exponential technologies while designing to zero,” Ingenlath said.
Polestar specifically says that the goal involves only the carbon emissions it can directly control, which means it’s everything, from emissions from its supply chain and from raw materials to finished cars leaving its factory.
How much carbon gas do we talk about during the life of a car?
About two-thirds of a gasoline-powered vehicle’s total carbon life cycle comes from burning gasoline. For something like a Volvo XC40 crossover, it’s about 58 tons of CO2e, or carbon dioxide equivalent, if we assume that 200,000 km (124,274 miles) is from factory to scrap yard. A smaller, more efficient car like Volkswagen’s latest Golf will produce less – VW is claiming around 37 tonnes of carbon for the Mk 8 Golf.
For EVs, the numbers are a bit more complicated; a car charged with electricity generated by burning coal will have a much greater carbon impact than a car powered by renewable energy. For example, Tesla said in its most recent sustainability report that using New York State’s clean energy to charge one of its cars equals 144 mpg (1.6 l / 100 km); to do the same in Michigan, which has a mixture of coal and gas, would be closer to 55 mpg (4.2 l / 100 km). (Based on a life cycle of 124,274 miles, a Tesla Model 3 loaded from the grid can have total carbon emissions of just 22 tons, according to the car manufacturer’s data.)
Using a global average of how electricity is generated, Polestar 2 gives a lifetime carbon footprint of 50 tons. (The Polestar 2 and Volvo XC40 share a common architecture.) Swap the numbers for Europe’s electricity mix and it drops to 42 tonnes, and only 27 tonnes of electricity comes from wind power alone.
And an EV requires more raw materials and more energy during production. VW says, for example, that although the electric ID.3’s life cycle carbon at 27 tons is much lower than the Golf, 13 tons is from the production phase, almost double that of the Golf.
Polestar’s task over the next few years is to work out how to significantly reduce its production carbon footprint. At the moment, it says that aluminum, steel and batteries make up 18 tons of a Polestar 2’s carbon release. Factor in polymers and electronics and it’s just over 22 tons of carbon. Some of it will decline as China’s electricity supply becomes carbon-free, as much of its supply chain is coal-fired.
But it’s about as specific as the “Polestar 0” project is now – look at nine years to see if the company meets its target.