A smart tool for the abridged assessment of potential environmental impacts of automotive solutions

This paper presents a smart tool to support the determination of sustainability of automotive components. Many research and industrial activities have been concentrated in the field of sustainability of passenger vehicles through the development of smart materials, manufacturing technologies and production processes. However, the environmental impacts quantification phase is always the most difficult and challenging in the design process. Literature and technical regulations provide that the Life Cycle Assessment methodology needs a lot of resources (both human and economic resources) to be implemented because of its complexity. The base idea of this work is to design and realize a tool easy-to-use also by non-LCA experts, with a set of input and output GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) to make the design process easier also from the point of view of impact characterization. As final result, the conceived method is targeted at representing a simple and ready-to-use tool, which allows the application of eco-design methodologies in the application to the automotive sector.