Bibliometric Analysis of the Use of Electric Vehicles as a Carbon Footprint Reduction Alternative

Abstract

Currently, the main source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions comes from the burning of fossil fuels. The European Parliament states that the transport sector, especially automobiles, is responsible for 60% of CO2 emissions. To reduce this high percentage, measures are being implemented to reduce the carbon footprint using green technologies such as electric vehicles. The objective of the research was to evaluate through a bibliometric analysis the use of electric vehicles as an alternative to reduce the carbon footprint. The study worked with research published in the Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct and Proquest databases from January 2010 to September 2021. The results showed that 1017 researches touched the topic of electric vehicles and their effect on carbon footprint reduction, being the year 2021 with the highest number of publications. The journal with the highest number of publications was "Energies" from the Scopus, Web of Science and Proquest databases. The country with the most research on the topic under study is the USA with 306 documents. The most researched type of vehicle is the pure electric vehicle for being an efficient alternative in reducing the carbon footprint, reducing emissions by an average of 91%, depending on the number of kilometers traveled and the storage capacity of the battery.