Simulation study on improvement of air quality by introducing electric vehicles

Recently, Chinese megacities have suffered serious air pollution. Previous studies have pointed out that transportation systems have become one of the major sources of air pollution and on-road pollutant concentrations are significantly higher than off-road. Electric vehicle (EV) introduction is proposed as a method to alleviate the current situation. In order to better understand the benefit of the use of EVs in Beijing, a simulation platform has been developed to evaluate the improvement of air quality with the use of EVs quantitatively within the selected area. Four scenarios with different EV penetration rates are proposed and the results revealed 5%, 10%, 15% EV penetration rates which will bring about improvement of 0.86%, 9.01% and 12.23% for PM2.5, 0.92%, 9.01% and 13.32% for nitrogen oxides (NOx), 0.95%, 8.86% and 13.73% for CO, respectively. The results revealed a promising improvement of air quality with the introduction of EVs.