The study is aimed at comparing the environmental air emissions external costs of electric, gasoline and diesel private passenger cars along their entire life cycle. The results provide the decision makers with a complementary and unconventional interpretation of the results of an ISO 14040 compliant Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Indeed LCA results are often difficult to be communicated and to be understood from the general public; on the other hand, the environmental external costs evaluation, where a single monetary value synthesizes the environmental impacts, can be easily understood, communicated to the broad public and compared with taxes, incentives and other economic tools. In the present study we demostrate that it is possible to carry out the application of a damage factor to the physical inventory flows. The application of this methodology to the Italian context leads to the conclusion that, if we compare the three types of vehicles - electric, diesel and petrol - of an average middle-size car (like VW Golf), the electric version produces less external costs than traditional internal combustion engine vehicles, both considering air pollution and Climate Change. The total life cycle air emissions externalities are 12.07 €/1000km for the electric version, 21.30 €/1000 km for the gasoline vehicle and 24.25 €/1000 for the diesel vehicle. At the same time the electric vehicle produces less external costs related to the air emissions both considering the entire lifecycle and only the processes that occur in Italy. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.