Energy and environmental evaluation of construction materials used for VW cars production

Abstract

Production and operation of vehicles currently has a significant impact on the environment. The choice of more environmentally friendly construction materials which a car is made from can significantly reduce its environmental impact. The main aim of this article was to compare the environmental impact assessment of changes in the design of passenger cars by using the life cycle assessment analysis (LCA). The paper presents a simplified LCA method of a car, which in specific cases can be used to analyse environmental impacts associated with the manufacturing process to assess the ecological performance of new passenger cars. In the adopted LCA simplification, the carbon dioxide equivalent emission CO2eq was used to assess the impact. The values of these variables were determined based on the mass of materials used to build the car. A practical example of using the simplified LCA method for a comparative assessment of the ecological efficiency of Volkswagen Group passenger cars manufactured over the last 30 years is presented.