Endogenous transformation of land transport in Europe for different climate targets

Road transport is responsible for about a quarter of Europe's greenhouse gas emissions, making its transformation a crucial part of Europe's overall decarbonization goals. Current European policies promote decarbonizing the transport sector and passenger car sales show an increased adoption of electric vehicles. Full electrification of land transport will significantly increase the average electricity demand but the use of smart charging and vehicle-to-grid could provide additional flexibility to balance wind and solar generation. In this study, we find cost-optimal transition pathways of the European land transport sector embedded in the sector-coupled open energy model PyPSA-Eur. We consider fossil-fueled, hydrogen-fueled, and electric cars using a 3-hour time resolution for a full year and covering 33 interconnected European countries. We analyze a transition path from 2025 to 2050 under different carbon budgets corresponding to a 1.7°C and 2°C temperature increase. Our results show that rapid electrification of road transport reduces the total system cost, even in the absence of climate targets. We see a clear preference for rapidly decommissioning internal combustion engine vehicles and using electric vehicles in all countries and under all carbon budgets. Allowing smart charging of electric vehicles decreases the total system cost by 1.6% because it reduces the need to install stationary batteries by almost 40%.