Environmental footprint assessment of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries in electric scooters: a case study of PT Motor Listrik Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia ranks as the world's sixth-largest contributor to CO2 emissions, with motorcycles alone responsible for 56,788 tons of CO2 in 2020. While electric motorbikes are considered a cleaner alternative due to their lack of exhaust emissions, their overall environmental impact must be evaluated throughout the entire battery life cycle. This study conducts a gate-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) on the lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries used in MOLINDO electric motorbikes, covering the supplier, production, usage, and disposal stages. The total environmental impact was found to be 920 points (pt), with the usage phase being the largest contributor at 550 pt, followed by production at 185.5 pt, supplier at 179 pt, and disposal at 5.54 pt. Two improvement strategies were explored: reusing external battery cases, which slightly reduced the impact to 918.86 pt, and repurposing second-life batteries, which extended battery use but increased the impact to 998.04 pt due to additional energy requirements. Compared to conventional motorbikes, electric motorbikes still offer a major environmental advantage in the usage phase (550 pt vs. 3,397 pt). These findings suggest that, alongside the shift to electric mobility, targeted actions such as better battery reuse, more efficient recycling, and cleaner electricity sources are essential to fully unlock the environmental benefits of electric motorbikes.