6. Consideration of Environmental Impacts of Automotive Lightweight Body Parts During the Conceptual Design Stage

Designing lightweight hybrid multi-material parts for automotive body applications is subject to a large solution space. This results in a large variety of concept alternatives that are able to fulfil the technical performance criteria. Towards prioritizing eco-efficient concepts, life cycle environmental impacts need to be determined at an early design stage. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a system analysis methodology that enables a quantitative analysis of energy and resource flows and associated environmental impacts. LCA models need to reflect the application and combination of different materials, manufacturing process chains and end-of-life treatments as well as different scenarios within the vehicle use stage. At the same time, LCA models need to cope with limited information availability at this early stage of design. Therefore, the current chapter provides an overview on methodological aspects in evaluating lightweight body part concepts for different life cycle scenarios. A software toolchain is implemented and applied in the course of two case studies.