Results of Life Cycle Assessments of Electronic Car Appliances Using Flexible Models for Products and Components

This paper will present the modeling of electronic products with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), especially for appliances in cars. The so called Generic Module based LCA enables the user to model nearly every electronic products, each relating to their respective manufacturing phases. A short introduction to the method will be underlined by several examples. From the co-operation with industry partners outcomes of multi-client studies will be shown. The LCA results of electronic car appliances (combined sensors and actuators) take into consideration the manufacturing phase, the use phase according to interactions between the electronic systems and the car’s use phase and finally the assessment of an End of Life (EoL) alternative for the appliance.