Innovative high performance two-wheeled sport vehicles: an energy and environmental comparison study

In this paper, two innovative two-wheeled vehicles, one with four-stroke four-cylinder engine and the other one with four-stroke three-cylinder engine, have been analyzed. These vehicles exhibit good performance in terms of weights, fuel consumption and emissions of pollutant and CO2. The aim of this paper is a comparison, from an energy and environmental standpoint, of the life cycle of these new models with the life cycle of a previous model of two-wheeled vehicle with four-stroke four-cylinder engine. LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is an excellent support tool for these analyses: through a detached procedure, environmental impacts of a manufacturing system throughout its whole life span can be evaluated and the correlated environmental effects can be quantified. LCA can aim also for the evaluation and comparison of the life cycle environmental effects of similar models relating to a specific kind of product. The final result of this paper is that the innovative vehicles attain a strong reduction of energy needs and associated environmental impacts, referred to the whole life cycle; this result is obtained through LCA methodology application and with an objective, reliable and verifiable analysis. Such energy and environmental impact reduction across the whole life span could stimulate the specific market segment: in fact the new models must be compared with competitors not only from the technical performance point of view, but also in terms of energy and environmental sustainability. A benchmark can be formed from the results of this analysis, in order to establish the level of sustainability of a particular model and to define potential improvement operations, with the purpose of continuous improvement