This study aims to provide a comprehensive and realistic evaluation of consumer and external costs associated with commercially available passenger cars. The central research question is: How do Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and external costs differ between conventional vehicles, Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) across various vehicle segments? The methodological approach includes the selection of 55 commonly registered vehicle variants in Germany and the calculation of TCO and external costs over a 16-year vehicle lifetime. TCO components include purchase price, governmental subsidies, remaining value, fuel or energy expenses, maintenance, insurance and taxes. External costs incorporate emissions, land use and the societal costs from purchase bonuses. Apart from the large quantity of considered vehicles and the depth of investigation, this study’s main contribution is the consideration of tax revenue as a negative external cost. The results show that BEVs consistently exhibit the lowest TCO and external cost across all segments. For example, a BEV in the E segment has 26% lower TCO and 14,300 € lower external cost than an equivalent diesel vehicle. FCEVs show competitive results in both TCO and external costs, though limited by market availability. While higher in TCO, vehicles in higher segments generally lead to lower external cost due to higher tax revenue. The findings support the economic and ecological advantages of BEVs, which should therefore be primarily considered by consumers and policy-makers.

Reconfigurable Battery System (RBS) can act as a variable DC source that keeps the DC-link voltage of an electric drivetrain quasi-constant, which is expected to improve drivetrain efficiency. Whether this yields a higher battery-to-shaft efficiency over complete drive cycles has rarely been quantified. This work compares a full-bridge RBS with a conventional Battery Pack (BP) supplying the same two-level inverter and axial-flux permanent-magnet machine. A quasi-static backward simulation evaluates both systems over drive cycles and three winding variants of the EMRAX 268. The simulated trends are validated on a drivetrain test bench for three of the cycles. In the simulated drive cycles the BP reaches the same or a slightly higher efficiency, with a maximum difference of 0.2 pp, since the higher cell and switch conduction losses of the RBS outweigh the benefit of the regulated DC link. An RBS advantage appears only for the high-voltage winding at low SoC and high speed. The measurements confirm a 0.6 pp to 0.9 pp higher efficiency of the BP, while the RBS delivers 0.6 % to 3.2 % more mechanical energy before cut-off. The benefits of the RBS are thus a stable DC-link voltage and a higher usable energy, not a efficiency gain.