500 Days of Electric Commutes

3 min readMay 20, 2024

Five years ago, if someone had told me that moving back to India would mean my daily grind would be fully electric, I’d have laughed. “What, am I moving to Europe?” I’d have said. But here I am, trading in the throaty rumble of a motorcycle for the hum of an EV and the whisper of a metro train.

Skipping over the part where I walked to the office in Bengaluru or the stretch when we were all cooped up because of the pandemic, I can confidently say I’ve clocked 500 days of fully electric commutes. And yeah, I’m proud of it. So, while my taste buds still crave the smoky richness of a good biryani, my commute’s gone full-on eco-warrior. Funny how life surprises you, right?

Clarkson wouldn’t be proud. But I am (Source: imgflip)

I decided to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see how much of an effect this was having on my carbon footprint compared to doing the same with a car. These are some of the assumptions I’m making:

Distance per day: 50 km (yes!)
Distance over 500 days: 50 km/day * 500 workdays = 25,000 km
Commute split each way: 24 km (train) + 1 km (EV — Metroride)

From this, it makes sense to estimate the CO2 emissions for each mode of transport. Note that even for the electric vehicles, I would be looking at the generation emissions to give a fair comparison.

For a car

Typical Mileage: 50 km/3 liters
CO2 equivalence of gasoline: 8.9 kg/gallon = 2.35 kg/liter [1]
CO2 equivalence per day: 3 * 2.35 = 7.05 kg/day
CO2 emitted over 500 days of commute: 7.05 kg/day * 500 days ~ 3500 kg

For the EV and Train

Electric Vehicle (EV):

Distance per day: 1 km * (up + down)
Energy per passenger km for EV: 1/(80 km/10 kWh) = 0.125 kWh/km [2]
CO2 emissions per kWh (Grid Mix): 0.7 kg CO2/kWh [3]
Total emissions: 2 km/day * 500 days * 0.125 kWh/km * 0.7 kg CO2/kWh = 87.5 kg CO2

Train:

Distance per day: 24 km * (up + down)
Train Capacity: 1000 passengers
Energy per km for train: 15 kWh/km / (1000 passengers) = 0.015 kWh/km [4, 5]
CO2 emissions per km: 0.015 kWh/km * 0.7 kg CO2/kWh = 0.0105 kg CO2/km
Total emissions: 48 km/day * 500 days * 0.01 kg CO2/km = 252 kg CO2/year

Total CO2 emissions for EV and Train:

Total CO2 emissions for EV and train: 87.5 kg CO2 (EV) + 252 kg CO2 (train) ~ 340 kg CO2

Daily Workhorse aka Hyderabad Metro (Source: By SSS8888 — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64411572)

Thus, over a period of 500 days, the net savings in CO2 amounts to around 3160 kg of CO2. To bring this into perspective, let’s compare this with the footprint from other common activities