Design for sustainability in automotive industry: A comprehensive review

Presented manuscript investigates the current sustainability research within the automotive industry, through a comprehensive review of the different studies in vehicles' life cycle, disposal and end of life analyses, and the different sustainability metrics and models used to quantify the environmental impact. The sustainability research in this study targets the measures and studies at the three basic elemental levels involved; environmental, economic, and societal. The presented review categorizes the literature into four main research areas; the life cycle assessment approach, the end-of-life perspective, the design for X, and the light-weight engineering and material selection studies. Also, the text attempts to draw the link between these research themes and expose any inter-relationships, and discuss the physics behind some of the sustainability models presented to analyze the automobile sustainability. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.