Abstract The growing market share of electric vehicles (EV) has increased the interest in charging strategies and their effects on the electricity system as well as their climatic soundness. However, the benefits of different charging strategies including Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) on a large regional scale, e.g. in Europe, have not been analyzed sufficiently. This study examines the impact of different charging strategies on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from electricity generation and EV batteries in Europe in 2050. To consider indirect emissions and potentially additional battery degradation due to V2G, a model coupling concept is applied to link Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with the electricity system model, PERSEUS-EU. Overall, EV could reduce the GHG emissions by 36% by simply replacing conventional cars. Controlled unidirectional charging and V2G add another 4 or 11 percentage points on the European level. However, for these gains an efficient implementation of V2G is required.