Life Cycle Inventory of a Generic U.S. Family Sedan Overview of Results USCAR AMP Project

Evaluating the relationship between use phase environmental impacts and manufacturing process precision

“…Similar work has shown an even greater dependence on the surface roughness of the mating surfaces for hypoid gear pairs, which are found in automotive differentials [12]. Because the vast majority of environmental impacts of an automobile occur during the use phase [13], the impact of increased manufacturing precision through better surface finish on the final drive reduction of an automotive manual transmission drivetrain presents the ideal case study for this investigation.…”

Development and applications of GREET 2.7 -- The Transportation Vehicle-CycleModel.

“…On the basis of data collected from a life-cycle inventory performed by USCAR, we assume that the Pb-Ac battery will require two replacements in the lifetime of the ICEV, HEV, and FCV (Sullivan et al 1998). In addition, Pb-Ac batteries are the top recycled consumer product, at more than 97%; new batteries contain 60% to 80% recycled lead and plastic (Battery Council International 2006).…”

“…In this analysis, we assume that the tires are replaced every 40,000 miles, so about three replacements are needed over the vehicle's lifetime. The last set of tires is at the end of its useful life when the rest of the vehicle is scrapped (Sullivan et al 1998). Potentially, the tires could last slightly longer on average, but because of safety concerns, used tires are not reused on vehicles.…”

“…However, because this is a controls modification, the amount of brake fluid used does not significantly change from one vehicle to another (Bohn 2005). We assumed that both the brake fluid and powertrain coolant, which is a 50%/50% mix of ethylene glycol and water, are replaced every 40,000 mi, requiring three lifetime replacements each (Sullivan et al 1998).…”

Unbundling cars to daily use and infrequent use vehicles—the potential role of car sharing

“…First of all, it should be noted that we here only look at the user phase of the vehicle and that there is a small chance that the total number of vehicles could increase if consumers continue to own one vehicle in addition to the shared vehicles. However, the user phase of the vehicle life cycle stands for the main environmental impact (Hawkins et al 2013;Sullivan et al 1998) and is thus the focus of our calculations. To put these numbers in perspective, we also calculate the number of vehicles these emissions would represent as Bvehicles taken off the road.^The answer depends on the extent of the adoption and usage of this system and the type of vehicle the light-duty truck is being replaced with for daily use cases.…”