Abstract:  In this paper， life cycle assessment method was used to comparatively study environmental cost，energy consumption and environmentimpact potential of hybrid electric vehicle ( Prius) ，pure electric vehicle ( BYD E6) ， and conventional fuel vehicle ( Santana) in their three stages of production，use and waste recycling． In their full life cycle，pure electric vehicle has the lowest environmental cost，followed by hybrid vehicle，and the highest is conventional fuel vehicles． The environmental cost of pure electric vehicle is only 36. 04% of that of fuel vehicle． The total energy consumptions of hybrid and pure electric vehicles are 59. 92% and 52. 20% of that of the traditional fuel vehicles， respectively． Compared with fuel vehicle， the energy consumption of electric vehicles is lower than that when it is used，and their energy consumption is higher than that in the process of vehicle manufacturing and waste recycling． In addition， the weighted total environmentalimpact potentials of hybrid and pure electric vehicles in full life cycle are 56. 72% and 34. 16% than those of the conventional fuel vehicles， respectively． Similar to fuel vehicle， the environmentalimpact load of hybrid vehicle is mainly from photochemical smog，while that of pure electric vehicle mainly comes from the three aspects: dust，global warming and photochemical smog． 

Key words: electric vehicle, life cycle assessment, environmental cost, energy consumption, environmentimpact potential