US going 100% EV by 2040 could save over 100k lives, study says.

Although climate change is a driving force behind the adoption of electric vehicles, it is not the only consideration. Taking combustion engines off the road directly saves lives by reducing air pollutants that can cause and trigger asthma and other lung diseases.

Now, report from the International Council on Clean Transportation have attempted to quantify this, comparing different energy scenarios over the next few decades. Currently, more than 41,800 people die prematurely from air pollution from road traffic, says the ICCT.

We already know that living near a busy road is associated with negative health outcomes. Combustible substances such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), particulates (PMs), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are all found around highways and busy roads that can cause health problems, and studies have repeatedly shown that living near a highway is associated with increased mortality.

The ICCT worked with the FIA ​​Foundation – yes, the non-profit for road safety is associated with the same FIA ​​that oversees F1 and other international events – to create a model to measure the emissions of road traffic until 2050. The model included light vehicles (passenger cars and trucks), heavy vehicles (cargo trucks), pickup trucks and the like, tricycles, buses and buses. It predicted levels of NOx, black and organic carbon, sulfur oxides, ammonia, CO, and VOCs.

The study calculated cardiovascular risk from factors such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, ischemic heart disease, lung cancer, and stroke (all linked to PM2.5 exposure and ozone exposure), as well as the risk of childhood asthma caused by NOx and NOx-caused early death in adults.

Then several events were run. The main story uses August 2025 as a starting point, with the US government openly hostile to the idea of ​​clean energy. Some scenarios consider what would happen if there was an ambitious effort to adopt EVs, assuming that 100 percent of all vehicles are zero-emission by 2045, some areas go all-EV for light vehicles by 2035 and heavy vehicles by 2040.