How to compare the environmental performance of different vehicle technologies? Vehicles with lower tailpipe emissions are perceived as cleaner. However, does it make sense to look only to tailpipe emissions? Limiting the comparison only to these emissions denies the fact that there are emissions involved during the production of a fuel and this approach gives too much advantage to zero-tailpipe vehicles like battery electric vehicles (BEV) and fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV). Would it be enough to combine fuel production and tailpipe emissions? Especially when comparing the environmental performance of alternative vehicle technologies, the emissions during production of the specific components and their appropriate end-of-life treatment processes should also be taken into account. Therefore, the complete life cycle of the vehicle should be included in order to avoid problem shifting from one life stage to another. In this article, a full life cycle assessment (LCA) of petrol, diesel, fuel cell electric (FCEV), compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), hybrid electric, battery electric (BEV), bio-diesel and bio-ethanol vehicles has been performed. The aim of the manuscript is to investigate the impact of the different vehicle technologies on the environment and to OPEN ACCESSEnergies 2014, 7 1468 develop a range-based modeling system that enables a more robust interpretation of the LCA results for a group of vehicles. Results are shown for climate change, respiratory effects, acidification and mineral extraction damage of the different vehicle technologies. A broad range of results is obtained due to the variability within the car market. It is concluded that it is essential to take into account the influence of all the vehicle parameters on the LCA results.

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In this paper, an environmental comparison of electric, hybrid, LPG and gasoline passenger vehicles is performed through a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Thanks to a range-based modeling system, the variations of the weight, the fuel consumption and the emissions within the family car category are considered instead of the average values. Unlike in a classic LCA, the use phase of vehicles has been modeled to cover vehicles with both a short and long lifespan in such way that the number of times a vehicle needs to be produced to cover the comparison basis or functional unit is taken into account.According to the assumptions and the used impact calculation method, the greenhouse effect of the LPG hybrid and battery electric vehicles are respectively 20.27 %, 27.44 % and 78.27% lower than for the gasoline vehicles. The assessment of the impact on human health and the air acidification give the best environmental score to the battery electric vehicle. A sensitivity analysis has allowed the assessment of the correlation between the respiratory effects and the euro emission standards.

In this paper the environmental impacts of a battery electric vehicle (BEV) are assessed in a Belgian context. A full descriptive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is performed, including the well-to-wheel (WTW) emissions (for a BEV these are the emissions coming from the electricity production) and the cradle-tograve emissions (related directly and indirectly to the production and the end-of-life (EOL) processing of the vehicle). First an overview of the energy consumption of the different vehicle technologies is given.This clearly shows that battery electric vehicles are less energy intensive than other vehicle technologies.Secondly, the environmental impacts of a BEV during its entire life cycle are assessed in detail. This illustrates the relative importance of the manufacturing step for a BEV and the strongly reduced environmental impact when recycling the battery. Furthermore, the influence of the electricity supply mix on the overall environmental impact of a BEV is assessed. The investigated electricity production plants include renewable and non-renewable resources: wind, hydro, nuclear, biogas, natural gas, oil and coal.The assessed impact categories are: acidification, human health and the greenhouse effect (GHE). A BEV has a better scores than a petrol vehicle except for the full coal or oil electricity production scenario, for which the BEV can have a bad score for human health and acidification.