Sustainability Framework for the Life Cycle Assessment of Light-Duty Vehicles

Increasing environmental concerns as well as economic and social impacts of transportation in communities have made essential the incorporation of sustainability into the planning process. This paper describes a long-term sustainability-based comprehensive framework for the life cycle assessment of any urban transportation mode. The sustainability framework, which is composed of four layers and three controllers, acts as a filter that decomposes the components and attributes of a transportation mode to reveal its sustainability dimensions. The four proposed sustainability layers, environment, technology, energy and economy, are used in a case study to assess light-duty vehicles. The assessment includes the quantification of a set of sustainability indicators for six light-duty vehicles to compare their performance. The results provide an overall sustainability comparison for an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV), a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), a fuel cell vehicle (FCV), an electric vehicle (EV), a plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV), and a gasoline pickup truck (GPT).