Research on the emission reduction potential of electric vehicles (EVs) offers significant insights for the transportation sector to mitigate the effects of human-induced climate change. Despite the growing interest in topic, a comprehensive literature compilation remains unavailable. To better understand the research progress and evolution of EVs’ emission reduction, we analyzed 1,984 articles published between 1993 and 2023. These articles, sourced from the Web of Science core collection, focus on the themes of "electric vehicle" and "emission reduction". Visualization tools such as CiteSpace, VOS viewer, and R-studio-based Bibliometrix were employed for a detailed bibliometric and thematic analysis. This paper presents the development trends of international publications, the key collaborations between international authors and institutions, a map of leading research centers on the topic, and a visualization of applied disciplines involved in this field. Building on the visualization analysis results, this paper further explores the emission reduction of EVs in various application scenarios, and examines the impacts of EV incentive policies on emission reduction.