To discover if the electric vehicles have the good energy-saving and emission-reducing merits in their lifecycles, this paper applies lifecycle evaluation and GREET model to calculate their energy consumption and pollution emission of PHEV and BEN, and compares the results with the traditional vehicles (GICEV) to evaluate their environmental benefits of EV. PHEV and BEV are lower than the GICEV in total energy consumption during the lifecycles by 18.94% and 24.72%, with outstanding energy saving advantages on driving. The two EVs have lower pollution emissions than GICEV in CO2, NOx, CO and VOC, of which BEV contributes most to CO and VOC emission reduction by 90.34% and 44.39%; however, SOx has an increment by 2.57 times. Generally, PHEV and BEV decrease the environmental loads by 24.25% and 40.72% compared with GICEV. When considering the negative externality, the pure economic costs of EVs are closer to the real costs, favorable for emission reduction. China will benefit from expansion of EV if Chinas energy structure can be optimized.