As the U.S. works to decarbonize the transportation sector and produce an increasing amount of “clean” (zero emission) electricity, electric vehicles (EVs) become logical alternatives to internal combustion engines (ICEs). However, to accelerate and/or broaden EV adoption, consumer-centric considerations need to be more thoroughly addressed, including cost, convenience, reliability, and safety. Although it is expected that EVs will continue to gain market share domestically, significantly more effort is required to address and remove key technology barriers to EV adoption among a greater percentage of the population. In response to these challenges, ARPA-E's Electric Vehicles for American Low-Carbon Living (EVs4ALL) program will focus on advancing next-generation battery technologies that have the potential to significantly improve affordability, convenience, reliability, and safety of EVs compared to those available today. If the EVs4ALL program can successfully achieve its primary objective, which is to increase domestic EV adoption through elimination of key battery detractors such as slow charge time, disappointing winter performance, concerns regarding resilience and high cost, it will directly impact three ARPA-E mission areas as follows:
i) 80% adoption of electrically powered passenger cars in the U.S. could reduce annual energy consumption by 4 quadrillion British Thermal Units (Quads), thereby improving the energy efficiency of the sector.
ii) 80% adoption of electrically powered cars could reduce overall CO2 emissions by 800 million tons/year, thereby reducing energy-related emissions.
iii) Solutions to i) and ii) may also target the utilization of “noncritical” battery materials in order to address supply chain risk and drive down cost, thereby reducing imports of critical metals and supporting ARPA-E’s energy independence mission.