Application of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment in the automotive sector – A systematic literature review

In the rapidly evolving automotive industry, there is an increasing need for comprehensive sustainability assessments to steer decision-making towards more sustainable practices. Our research tackles critical gaps in applying Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) to products and processes within this sector. Through a systematic literature review, we analysed 18 existing scholarly automotive-related LCSA case studies to pinpoint the current state of LCSA implementation, identify challenges, propose novel methodological insights and future directions. Despite the reinforced methodological framework of LCSA and the automotive industry's extensive experience in applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) over the past two decades, our in-depth analysis revealed significant discrepancies among automotive-related LCSA case studies, underscoring the lack of a harmonized methodological approach. Challenges include inconsistencies with established norms and guidelines regarding the choice of functional units (FUs), system boundaries, indicator selection across the sustainability pillars, and interpretation of results. Additionally, inadequate databases for the economic and social pillars hinder data availability and consistency. Selective aggregation of results and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods further contribute to divergences in findings. To address these challenges and advance LCSA in the automotive industry, methodological harmonization is crucial, including predefined FUs for consistent product systems, the systematic selection of system boundaries and indicators, the development of secondary databases for economic and social pillars, and the integration of visualization tools as well as standardized MCDA methods to evaluate trade-offs. Continued research efforts, collaboration, and methodological refinement are necessary to effectively harness the potential of LCSA for promoting sustainability in the automotive sector. © 2024 The Authors