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Cars cause a lot of pollutants during the utilization phase. Within the last years environmental legislation tried to reduce the emissions by the introduction of very tight laws. The results are impressive: Most of the car exhaust emissions like carbonmonoxid and nitrous oxides have been reduced. At this stage new emission reduction limits in Europe as well as in the United States can only be achieved if the formulation of the catalyst system is significantly changed. An increased use of precious metals and rare earth materials is the result of such a modification which succeeds in a more expensive design of the total catalyst systems. More expensive means not only cost aspects but also the environmental burdens related to the increased production of precious metals and other catalyst components. The Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) of the catalyst system which achieves the new legislation is demonstrated as well as the effects to the usage phase.

For integrating Life Cycle Assessment into the design process it is more and more necessary to generate models of single life cycle steps respectively manufacturing processes. For that reason it is indispensable to develop parametric processes. With such disposed processes the aim could only be to provide a tool where parametric environmental process models are available for a designer. With such a tool and the included models a designer will have the possibility to make an estimation of the probable energy consumption and needed additive materials for the applied manufacturing technology. Likewise if he has from the technical point of view the opportunity, he can shift the applied joining technology in the design phase by changing for instance the design.