Cradle-to-grave assessment of Austrian passenger car traffic based on actual vehicle movements and derivation of future forecasts for minimising greenhouse gas emissions

As part of the decarbonisation process for passenger car fleet in Austria, battery electric cars in particular have been subsidised in recent years, as these vehicles are considered to be largely emission-free during use and are expected to reduce emissions in future. However, in order to sustainably reduce the global greenhouse gas emissions of Austrian passenger car traffic, taking into account all types of propulsion systems, it is necessary to apply a cradle-to-gate approach, as is commonly done in comparable analyses in the literature, which evaluates the emissions of the entire vehicle life cycle. The most important phase in the life cycle assessment remains the well-to-wheel phase, which includes emissions from energy supply and vehicle use. Due to the large number of influencing factors, highly simplified models are usually used for this phase in the literature. As part of this work, a methodology was developed that, allows an in-depth analysis of entire vehicle fleets by linking real vehicle movements with emissions data and energy consumption. By using real vehicle movements, environmental conditions (ambient temperature, etc.) and traffic situations (traffic jams, etc.) can be integrated into the emissions assessment. In order to represent these influencing factors realistically, the assessment is carried out at hourly intervals rather than annually, as is usual in the literature. This new methodology, which enables a realistic cradle-to-gate analysis of the Austrian passenger car fleet, allows individual measures to be evaluated in advance using future scenarios and a package of measures to be defined that will enable Austrian passenger car traffic to achieve minimal future global greenhouse gas emissions.