A critical review of electric vehicle sustainability from a life cycle and climate perspective

Electric vehicles (EVs) are central to transport decarbonization, but their environmental benefits depend on interactions among vehicle production, battery value chains, electricity supply, charging infrastructure, operational strategies, and end‐of‐life management. This review critically synthesizes EV sustainability from an integrated life‐cycle and climate perspective using a structured literature‐selection process that retained 224 studies for detailed evaluation. The assessment covers life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies, raw‐material extraction and battery manufacturing, vehicle production, charging and energy‐delivery systems, use‐phase electricity consumption, recycling and circularity, climate‐mitigation potential, and artificial intelligence (AI) enabled electric mobility. The synthesis confirms that EVs generally offer lower life‐cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles, particularly under low‐carbon electricity systems, although the magnitude of this advantage remains strongly influenced by grid carbon intensity (CI), battery production, vehicle lifetime, driving and charging behavior, system boundaries, and recycling assumptions. Charging infrastructure emerges as an integral sustainability dimension because renewable integration, smart charging, vehicle‐to‐grid operation, station planning, and grid constraints affect both operational efficiency and system‐level emissions. However, for these benefits to be fully realized, a stronger connection with tangible life‐cycle outcomes is required. Methodological diversity, lack of life‐cycle evaluation of infrastructure, regional and temporal diversity, battery circularity, and AI generalization and interpretability are some of the key knowledge gaps identified in the review. Future EV sustainability needs to be based on a harmonized and dynamic life‐cycle approach encompassing sustainable manufacturing, grid decarbonization, renewables, intelligent charging, battery circularity, and system‐level sustainability metrics.