Brightcon 2025, hackathon & courses in Grenoble and online

The use of light-weight materials for automotive components (ecodesign strategy commonly known as lightweighting) can induce environmental benefits due to weight-induced energy savings in internal combustion engine vehicles. However, for battery electric vehicles, the effectiveness of lightweighting depends on the electricity grid mix powering the vehicle during its use phase. As Europe transitions toward renewable energy sources, the environmental impacts of electricity grids are decreasing annually. This ongoing evolution creates a need for dynamically assessing the use phase impacts of automotive components to understand how evolving electricity grid mixes influence the ecodesign process. This study compares retrospective and prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) approaches for a case study of a prototype automobile interior door handle (Technology Readiness Level 3-4, laboratory-tested) made from a novel polypropylene composite that incorporates recycled materials and eucalyptus fiber. The prototype is compared with material alternatives currently used for automotive components, including a polypropylene composite with 40 % hemp fibers, a polyamide 6 composite reinforced with 40 % glass fibers, and a polyamide 6-6 composite reinforced with 20 % carbon fibers. The influence of weight-induced energy consumption during the use phase is analyzed for a battery electric vehicle, comparing two electricity grid mixes (Poland and Portugal), using two approaches: (i) retrospective, based on the market electricity generation datasets in the ecoinvent 3.11 database, which use average data from 2021. (ii) prospective, based on forecasted market electricity generation scenarios mapped and processed to align with the electricity generation datasets in ecoinvent using Brightway25. The preliminary results reveal significant differences between retrospective and prospective approaches, particularly for the use phase in Poland, due to its current fossil fuel dependence and forecasted renewable energy transition, resulting in environmental trade-offs between the alternatives for the automobile interior door handle.