Sustainability Assessment of Renewable-Energy-Driven Vehicles: A Global Review of Life-Cycle Performance and Environmental Implications

Abstract

While the global shift to low-carbon, sustainable mobility accelerates and stimulates interest in vehicles powered by renewable energies, it remains unclear how the overall set of sustainability issues surrounding these alternatives has been appreciated. While the available evidence is based primarily on use-phase emissions, use-phase material requirements, lifecycle balance, and end-of-life problems, these areas have scarcely been covered. This research compares the overall sustainability performance of solar-powered transport, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, biofuels-powered transport, and battery-powered vehicles using a holistic life-cycle approach. Based on a PRISMA-2020-tracked systematic literature review, which in turn was accompanied by a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer and Biblioshiny, the meta-analysis includes peer-reviewed publications on these alternatives from 2010 to 2025. The analysis highlights that battery-powered vehicles can eliminate life-cycle emissions in substantial numbers, particularly in regions with a dominant share of renewable power in electricity production, while the corresponding sustainability potential of vehicles using hydrogen is highly dependent on the use of renewable hydrogen. In comparison, biofuels show highly variable results, which depend on the source of production, while solar-supported transport, in turn, has scarcely arrived on the horizon. In general, regardless of the alternatives, structural problems include essential minerals, inhomogeneous boundaries in life-cycle assessments, and immature circular economies. This synthesis also emphasizes the importance of overarching policy strategies to align transport policies with overall energy transitions and circular economies. Improving the potential of recycling, standardizing boundaries in life-cycle assessments, and scaling up the use of renewable energy can, in turn, help trigger truly sustainable transport transitions.