The reduction of emissions and fuel consumption represents a central aim of today's vehicle engineering, at the same time the customers' demands for comfort rise. In the context of increased relevance of emerging markets, differences in customer behaviour, market specific emission regulations and the variety of environmental impacts in different operational areas, the advantages of market and customer profile oriented vehicle development strategies become clearer.
In this paper a holistic methodology for the definition of optimal, customer oriented requirements for new vehicle concepts will be explained. The so called 3D-method is suitable when defining basic properties, e.g. required capacity of electric energy storage or layout of power transmitting elements, dependent on user profiles, targeting e.g. emission reduction, lightweight design and range optimization of electric vehicles. Furthermore, it is used for the definition of durability requirements.