Investigation of CO₂ Emissions in Production and Usage Phases for a Hybrid Vehicle System Component

The transport sector in Japan emits a large amount of CO2. Passenger vehicles’ and trucks’ emissions are the largest part of the emission in the transport sector. Electrified vehicles are expected to be key technologies for reducing CO2 emissions. Using electric propulsion systems, such as hybrid system, the efficiency of vehicles for the propulsion can be improved. The kinetic energy of vehicles can be recycled by regeneration and the energy can be used for the following accelerations. As the consequent, the CO2 emissions will be reduced in comparison with conventional vehicles. This study focuses on the improvement of drive energy and investigates the impact of electric components in hybrid systems on CO2 emission reductions. Electric components in a hybrid vehicle system enable electric propulsion and contribute to reducing fuel consumptions. At the same time, such electric components contain materials of which the production consumes a large amount of energy. To estimate the CO2 reduction effect of hybrid electric vehicles, life cycle assessments are important. In this paper, the CO2 emissions in the production phase of an electric component are estimated and compared with the emissions of a hybrid electric vehicle in usage phase.