New Methodology of Life Cycle Assessment for Clean Energy Vehicle and New Car Model

Shigeki Nitta; Yoshihisa Moriguchi

doi:10.4271/2011-01-0851

Mazda announced that all customers who purchase Mazda cars are provided with the joy of driving and excellent environmental and safety performance under slogan of "Sustainable Zoom-Zoom" long-term vision for technology development.

The purpose of this study is to develop a new approach of Life Cycle Assessment (abbreviated to LCA) to be applied to clean energy vehicles and new car models. The improvement of both environmental performance, e.g., fuel consumption, exhaust emissions, vehicle weight reduction, and LCA that is a useful methodology to assess the environmental load of automobiles for their lifecycles has become more important.

LCA by inventory analysis, for RX-8 Hydrogen RE as a rotary engine vehicle used hydrogen as clean energy, was carried out and disclosed the world for the first time. LCA for new Mazda 5 was carried out as the portfolio of all models, previously only the specific model equipped with fuel efficiency device based on ISO14040. The majority of data on production of materials were taken from GaBi4 database. The data on production of parts and these assemblies were taken from in-house.

As a result, lifecycle environmental load of the RX-8 Hydrogen RE depends on production methods of hydrogen fuel. The RX-8 Hydrogen RE using by-product hydrogen of caustic soda with least environmental load was verified to reduce 57% of carbon dioxide (abbreviated to CO₂) compared with the one using gasoline fuel. The lifecycle environmental load of the new Mazda 5 depends on fuel efficiency and emission gas purification. The new Mazda 5 was verified to reduce 14% of CO₂ compared with the predecessor.

In this study, LCA of the RX-8 Hydrogen RE in the Japanese market and of the new Mazda 5 in the European market were carried out. Further studies for other markets are necessary as expansion of these delivered markets.

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New Methodology of Life Cycle Assessment for Clean Energy Vehicle and New Car Model 2011-01-0851

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