A comparison of the environmental sustainability of conventional, electric and hybrid vehicles

Atmospheric pollution in urban eas is mainly caused by the transportation sector. One possibility to reduce this contribution is to switch to electric or hybrid vehicles, which e chacterized by null or significantly re-duced emission at the end-of-pipe, i.e. operation. However, additional components e required for realizing electric and hybrid vehicles and on a life cycle perspective the effectiveness of switching towds these solu- Tions should be assessed. With this purpose, in this study, four types of vehicles were comped by Life Cy-cle Assessment: A conventional gasoline vehicle; a pure electric vehicle; a plug-in hybrid gasoline-electric vehicle; a plug-in hybrid fuel cell-battery vehicle. The considered electric and hybrid vehicles were obtained by repowering a conventional vehicle. This way, the attention can be focused only on the powertrain differ-ences and inefficiencies, with the added value of avoiding further assumptions. The selected impact indica- Tors for reporting the Life Cycle Assessment results e Cumulative Energy Demand and Climate Change. For the conventional gasoline vehicle, almost the entire values calculated for Climate Change and Cumula- Tive Energy Demand indicators e due to the fuel use (more than 99%). For the electric and hybrid vehicles, this contribution is reduced in the range 70-91% (depending on the vehicle and on the indicator), as the con-struction phase, dominated by the battery manufacturing process and fuel cell manufacturing processes, conquers a higher relative importance. Nevertheless, the electric and hybrid vehicles allow for a significative reduction, in the range 29-48% (de-pending on the type of vehicle and on the indicator), of Climate Change and Cumulative Energy Demand indicators with respect to the case of gasoline conventional one.