Can I model emissions from Electric, Fuel-Cell, and Hybrid Vehicles and Equipment in MOVES?

See More Frequent Questions about MOVES and Related Models.

Electric vehicles and equipment do not generate tailpipe or evaporative emissions like conventional vehicles. However, these vehicles do consume energy, leading to greenhouse gas emissions, and they generate brake and tire particulate matter (PM) emissions. MOVES includes electricity as a “fuel type” for all vehicle types other than motorcycles, and thus can directly estimate energy consumption and brake and tire wear PM emissions for them.

As of MOVES3, MOVES includes electric light-duty vehicles – passenger cars, passenger trucks, and light commercial trucks (source types 21, 31, and 32 respectively).
As of MOVES4, MOVES also includes electric heavy-duty vehicles, including all types of trucks (source types 51, 52, 53, 61, and 62), all types of buses (source types 41, 42, and 43), and motor homes (source type 54).

You can model the impacts of changing the fractions of fully electric vehicles for any of these source types using the AVFT input table in MOVES. You can access this table using the Fuel tab in the data manager at any scale: MOVES Data Importer (Default Scale), the County Data Manager (County Scale), or the Project Data Manager (Project Scale). Which scale you should choose depends on what type of analysis you are doing.

The MOVES Technical Guidance, the latest version of which can be found on EPA’s Policy and Technical Guidance for State and Local Transportation website, includes instructions on how to use the MOVES AVFT Tool to create the AVFT input table – this guidance is focused on County Scale but these instructions can be used for a MOVES run at any scale.

In addition, you can find more details on different scales in MOVES as well as how to use the AVFT Tool to create the AVFT input table in the MOVES Hands-On Training Course materials, available online at MOVES Training.

EPA Guidance

If you are modeling emissions for state implementation plans, transportation conformity or other regulatory purposes, please see the MOVES Technical Guidance, the latest version of which can be found on EPA’s Policy and Technical Guidance for State and Local Transportation website.

If you are estimating emission benefits for programs that replace diesel vehicles or equipment with electric models, please see the latest version of EPA’s Diesel Retrofit and Replacement Projects: Quantifying and Using Their Emission Benefits in SIPs and Conformity, found on EPA Policy and Technical Guidance for State and Local Transportation website. See the sections covering onroad vehicles and nonroad equipment.

If you are modeling greenhouse gases or energy consumption, the latest version of EPA’s MOVES Greenhouse Gas Guidance, found on EPA’s State and Local Transportation Estimating Greenhouse Gas Emissions website may be a useful resource for how to do this type of analysis.

“Upstream” Emissions (Onroad and Nonroad)

MOVES estimates emissions resulting from vehicles and equipment and does not account for the “upstream” emissions associated with producing gasoline, diesel, ethanol, electricity, hydrogen, and other fuels. However, MOVES can estimate the energy consumed by vehicles in their operation, and this energy consumption can then be used as an input for other tools that estimate the emissions associated with fuel and electricity production.

Hybrids (Onroad)

MOVES does not separately model hybrids or plug-in hybrids. These vehicles meet the same emissions standards as conventional gasoline or diesel vehicles, and their emissions are incorporated into the fleet average emissions for the gasoline or diesel vehicle category for each model year in MOVES.

To account for vehicle populations and vehicle miles for gasoline-electric hybrids, add them to the corresponding populations and mileages for gasoline vehicles.

Apportioning MOVES Results between Battery and Fuel Cell Vehicles Electric Vehicles (Onroad)

MOVES has the capability to model two different types of heavy-duty electric vehicles (EVs): battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). While they are modeled separately in MOVES and have their own sales fractions and emission rates, both technology types are always aggregated together under the electricity fuel type (fuelTypeID 9) in MOVES output.

For some analyses, it may be helpful to have separate energy consumption, emissions, and activity estimates for heavy-duty BEVs and FCEVs. This information requires post-processing MOVES. Instructions for this processing, which is done with SQL commands, are available on EPA’s MOVES GitHub site.

Note that MOVES cannot model light-duty FCEVs.

Nonroad Equipment

The nonroad module in MOVES does not model electric or fuel-cell powered nonroad equipment. Fuel-cell and fully electric nonroad equipment can be assumed to have no direct emissions. MOVES does not estimate brake and tire wear emissions from nonroad equipment, so these emissions cannot be estimated with MOVES regardless of the equipment’s fuel type.

The indirect (“upstream”) emissions from electricity and hydrogen production cannot be calculated with MOVES, but, as described above, you can estimate the energy demand from electric and/or fuel-cell powered nonroad equipment by calculating the energy demand for conventionally-fueled equipment of the same type. Nonroad equipment fuel consumption is modelled as “Brake Specific Fuel Consumption” (BSFC). The input for this value is in pounds of fuel per brake horsepower hour (lbs/bhp-hr) and MOVES outputs the total mass of fuel per day for a user-specified engine category in the user-defined geographic domain. The user can select their preferred units of mass – grams, kilograms, pounds, or U.S. tons – in the “General Output” Panel.

For more information, see the nonroad section of the MOVES Technical Guidance, the latest version of which can be found on EPA’s Policy and Technical Guidance for State and Local Transportation website.