Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of retrofit electrification: Assessment for a real case study

Nowadays fleet electrification appears the most concrete opportunity to reduce the environmental burdens of the transportation sector. However, Battery Electric Vehicle penetration has to deal with crucial challenges, such as new BEVs high price, customers’ reluctant and scarcity of materials. In this regard, electric retrofit is emerging as a low-cost and short-term solution to deal with these issues. However, to date only few studies focus on regulatory framework of electric retrofit and fewer quantify the environmental benefits of a converted BEV used in a certain context. This paper analyses a retrofit industrial prototype made by a local start up with all features available for a future homologation and it proposes a comparative Life Cycle Assessment, stressing the significant environmental hotspots to suggests in which geographical context governments should promote retrofit conversion. Two scenarios composed by two time-related parts are evaluated: a vehicle replacement with a new Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle and a retrofit conversion process of a SmartForTwo W450. The production stage of conversion kit is assessed mainly through primary data, while operation consumption is calculated through an analytic model implemented in MATLAB- Simulink. A detailed sensitivity analysis is performed in which different options for electricity grid mix, energy consumption, battery pack maintenance and EoL pathways are combined, for a total of 274 scenario combinations. The results reveal that retrofit conversion allows achieving about 45 % Greenhouse Gases saving compared to new replacement, in particular when urban driving and renewable electricity grid mix are considered.