Electric cars are often criticised on one particular point: even if they produce no exhaust emissions while driving, what happens if they do not last as long as petrol or diesel cars?
That question matters because battery-electric vehicles generally require more emissions to manufacture, particularly because of their batteries. Their climate advantage depends on lower emissions during use eventually outweighing that larger manufacturing footprint.
New real-world research suggests that this advantage remains substantial even after vehicle mileage and lifespan are taken into account.
A study published in Nature Communications on 21 September 2026 used data covering every battery-electric vehicle in Britain to compare how electric, conventional and hybrid vehicles are actually driven and how long they remain in use.
The researchers found that the earliest generation of battery-electric vehicles was driven less and did not remain on the road as long as conventional cars. Even so, those vehicles still produced lower lifecycle greenhouse-gas emissions.
More importantly, the gap has been closing quickly. If recent trends continue, battery-electric vehicles purchased in 2026 are projected to match conventional cars in both annual mileage and lifetime.
For current battery-electric vehicles, the researchers estimated lifecycle emissions of approximately 88 grams of carbon-dioxide equivalent per kilometre. Conventional vehicles were estimated at 254–270 g CO₂e/km, while hybrids were estimated at approximately 190 g CO₂e/km.
The debate depends on more than tailpipe emissions
Comparing electric and conventional vehicles is more complicated than measuring what comes out of an exhaust pipe.
A petrol or diesel car produces emissions when fuel is burned, but emissions also occur when the vehicle and its fuel are produced.
An electric vehicle produces no tailpipe carbon dioxide while driving, but emissions are still generated during vehicle manufacturing, battery production and electricity generation.
Lifecycle assessment attempts to combine these stages into a single estimate.
The central question is therefore not whether electric vehicles have zero emissions. They do not.
The question is whether their higher manufacturing emissions are outweighed by lower emissions during the years and kilometres they are actually used.
Vehicle lifespan is one of the biggest uncertainties
Many lifecycle comparisons have to assume how far a vehicle will travel before it is retired.
This matters because a car with a high manufacturing footprint looks environmentally worse if it is scrapped early.
If that same vehicle stays on the road for many years and travels a large distance, its manufacturing emissions are effectively spread across more kilometres.
Electric vehicles have historically created uncertainty here because the modern battery-electric fleet is relatively young.
There has simply been less real-world evidence about how long electric cars remain in use compared with petrol and diesel vehicles that have been sold at scale for decades.
The new study addresses this by moving away from assumed lifetimes and examining actual vehicle-use records.
The researchers used Britain’s real-world vehicle records
Daniel Mehlig and Iain Staffell of Imperial College London analysed vehicle data from Britain to compare mileage and survival across different powertrains.
The dataset allowed the researchers to track how electric vehicles were being used rather than assuming that their driving patterns matched conventional cars.
This distinction is important because early electric vehicles were not necessarily bought or used in the same way as petrol or diesel cars.
Early adopters may have owned an electric car as a second vehicle, driven it shorter distances, or chosen from a relatively narrow range of models with limited battery capacity.
Those early patterns can make the entire electric-vehicle category appear less intensively used than the vehicles being sold today.
First-generation electric cars really did have a disadvantage
The researchers did not find that electric vehicles had always matched conventional cars.
The first generation of battery-electric vehicles was driven less each year and had shorter observed lifetimes than petrol and diesel vehicles.
This is an important finding because it confirms that some criticism based on early electric-car use was grounded in a genuine difference.
However, the climate comparison did not reverse.
Even with lower mileage and shorter lifetimes, those early electric cars still produced lower lifecycle greenhouse-gas emissions than conventional vehicles.
The lower emissions during use were large enough to compensate for both the higher manufacturing footprint and the weaker early utilisation pattern.
The electric-vehicle fleet has been changing quickly
Early electric cars are not necessarily a good guide to the vehicles being purchased now.
Battery ranges have increased, charging infrastructure has expanded and electric models are now available across a much wider range of vehicle types.
The researchers found that the mileage and lifespan gap between battery-electric and conventional vehicles has been narrowing over successive vehicle cohorts.
Using those trends, they project that battery-electric vehicles purchased in 2026 will match conventional vehicles in annual mileage and lifetime if the recent trajectory continues.
This is a projection rather than a completed observation. A car bought in 2026 cannot yet have demonstrated a full 15- or 20-year lifespan.
The study therefore uses historical fleet behaviour to estimate what the newest generation is likely to do over its full life.
A neural network was used to project current vehicles over their lifetime
The researchers trained a transformer neural network on the real-world vehicle data to estimate mileage and survival for newer cars whose complete lifetimes have not yet been observed.
This allowed them to combine changing patterns of vehicle use with lifecycle-emissions estimates.
For current battery-electric vehicles, the resulting estimate was approximately 88 g CO₂e for every kilometre driven over the vehicle’s lifecycle.
The equivalent estimates for conventional vehicles were between 254 and 270 g CO₂e/km.
Hybrid vehicles sat between the two at approximately 190 g CO₂e/km.
On these assumptions, current battery-electric cars produce less than half the lifecycle greenhouse-gas emissions of hybrids and roughly one-third of those from conventional petrol or diesel vehicles.
Higher battery manufacturing emissions do not disappear
The result does not mean battery production is environmentally insignificant.
Manufacturing a battery-electric vehicle generally produces more greenhouse-gas emissions upfront than manufacturing a comparable combustion-engine vehicle.
Battery production requires energy and large quantities of processed materials, including lithium, nickel, graphite and other minerals depending on the battery chemistry.
Those emissions create what is sometimes described as a carbon debt at the beginning of the vehicle’s life.
The climate benefit appears because electric driving produces substantially fewer emissions per kilometre once the vehicle is operating, particularly in an electricity system with a relatively low-carbon generation mix.
Over enough kilometres, the lower operating emissions repay the additional manufacturing footprint.
Driving the car more can actually improve the lifecycle comparison
At first glance, driving more kilometres sounds environmentally worse.
In absolute terms, more driving still consumes more energy and creates more emissions.
But when comparing two vehicles on a per-kilometre lifecycle basis, utilisation matters differently.
A large share of an electric car’s emissions occurs before the first kilometre is driven because of manufacturing and battery production.
If the vehicle remains useful for longer and covers more kilometres, those fixed manufacturing emissions are spread across a larger amount of transport.
This is one reason the convergence in electric and conventional vehicle lifetimes is important for lifecycle assessment.
The electricity grid still matters
The 88 g CO₂e/km estimate is not a universal number for every electric car in every country.
The carbon intensity of the electricity used for charging has a substantial effect on lifecycle emissions.
An electric vehicle charged predominantly from coal-generated electricity will have higher operating emissions than one charged from a system dominated by renewables, nuclear power or other low-carbon sources.
Vehicle size, battery size, energy efficiency and manufacturing location also matter.
The study therefore provides strong evidence for the British fleet under the lifecycle assumptions used by the researchers, rather than a single emissions figure that should be copied unchanged to every country.
This is especially important when interpreting the result in South Africa
South Africa’s electricity system differs substantially from Britain’s, particularly because coal still contributes a large share of domestic electricity generation.
That means the exact 88 g CO₂e/km estimate should not be treated as the lifecycle footprint of an electric vehicle driven in South Africa.
The more transferable finding is about longevity.
One of the longstanding uncertainties in electric-vehicle comparisons has been whether battery-electric cars are used enough and survive long enough to recover their larger manufacturing footprint.
The British data suggest that this disadvantage has been shrinking rapidly as electric-vehicle technology matures.
For South Africa, the ultimate lifecycle balance would depend heavily on the electricity used for charging, the vehicle model, battery size, driving distance and how the electricity grid changes over the vehicle’s lifetime.
The study is not saying every electric car is automatically cleaner
Lifecycle comparisons are averages and projections.
A very large battery-electric SUV can require substantially more material and energy to manufacture than a small electric hatchback.
Similarly, a highly efficient small petrol vehicle driven very little may have a different lifecycle comparison from a large combustion vehicle driven long distances.
Individual vehicles can therefore sit above or below the fleet averages.
The value of the new study lies in showing what happens when real-world mileage and survival behaviour are incorporated at fleet scale instead of assuming that all vehicles travel the same distance and last equally long.
There are still uncertainties around very new electric cars
The newest battery-electric vehicles have not existed long enough for researchers to observe their complete lifetimes directly.
The projection that 2026 vehicles will match conventional lifetimes depends on recent improvements continuing.
Unexpected battery degradation, repair costs, changing resale markets or future scrappage behaviour could alter the realised lifespan.
The reverse is also possible. Improvements in battery durability, repairability and second-hand demand could cause newer electric vehicles to outperform current projections.
The researchers’ use of a predictive model is therefore necessary precisely because complete lifecycle evidence for a newly purchased vehicle cannot yet exist.
The result challenges an argument based mainly on the earliest EVs
Some scepticism about electric vehicles has been shaped by the first generation of mass-market models.
Those cars often had smaller batteries, shorter ranges, fewer charging options and a narrower customer base than modern electric vehicles.
The new study confirms that early battery-electric vehicles were indeed driven less and had shorter lifetimes than conventional cars.
But it also shows why treating those early vehicles as representative of the technology indefinitely can be misleading.
Successive generations have moved toward conventional-car levels of utilisation and longevity while maintaining a substantial lifecycle emissions advantage under British conditions.
The most important number may not be 88
The figure of 88 g CO₂e/km is likely to attract the most attention because it allows a direct comparison with conventional vehicles.
But the broader finding may be more important.
The climate case for electric cars does not appear to depend on pretending that early electric vehicles lasted as long as petrol and diesel cars.
According to the study, they did not.
They still produced lower lifecycle emissions, and the durability and utilisation gap has subsequently narrowed.
That makes the comparison less dependent on idealised assumptions and more firmly grounded in how vehicles are actually being used.
Source Information
Study Title: Real-world mileage and survival of electric vehicles in Britain and implications for lifecycle emissions
Authors: Daniel Mehlig and Iain Staffell
Journal: Nature Communications
Published: 21 September 2026
Dataset: Real-world British vehicle records covering battery-electric, conventional and hybrid vehicles, used to compare annual mileage and vehicle survival across successive cohorts.
Method: The researchers combined observed fleet behaviour with lifecycle-emissions analysis and trained a transformer neural network to project mileage and survival for newer vehicles whose complete lifetimes have not yet been observed.
Main finding: First-generation battery-electric vehicles were driven less and had shorter lifetimes than conventional vehicles but still produced lower lifecycle emissions. If recent trends continue, battery-electric vehicles purchased in 2026 are projected to match conventional vehicles in annual mileage and lifespan. Current battery-electric vehicles were estimated at 88 g CO₂e/km over their lifecycle, compared with 254–270 g for conventional vehicles and 190 g for hybrids.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-77892-4
