Converting a Conventional Car into a Hybrid Solar Vehicle: a LCA Approach Francesco Antonio Tiano * Gianfranco Rizzo * Giovanni De Feo * Silvio Landolfi * * University of Salerno, Department of Industrial Engineering, Fisciano, SA 84040 Italy (e-mail: ftiano, grizzo, g.defeo @unisa.it, s.landolfi2@studenti.unisa.it). Abstract: The growth of world energy consumption and the increase of passenger vehicles areis setting new challenges to environmental protection. Large diffusion of electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles seems to be the most feasible solution. However, the need of fast charging infrastructure, the still low penetration of renewable electricity production and the massive reconversion of fleets limit the feasibility of this solution. A life-cycle assessment study of several mobility options is presented in the paper. The analyses, performed by the use of the GREET model software, show that a suitable solution to reduction of total energy consumption and greenhouse gases emissions in the short to medium term could be the conversion of conventional vehicles into hybrid solar vehicles, as in the system developed at the University of Salerno. Keywords: Hybrid Electric Vehicles, Life-Cycle Assessment, Automotive, Greenhouse Gases, Energy Consumption, Solar Vehicles 1. INTRODUCTION The economic growth, with particular emphasis on Or- ganization for Economic Cooperation and Development nonmembers (non-OECD) regions, would cause a world energy consumption increase by 28% between 2015 and 2040. World gross domestic product (GDP) would increase by 3.0% per year from 2015 to 2040, while the price of North Sea Brent crude oil would reach 109 $/barrel. These forecasts are valid for a Reference case determined on the views of economic and demographic trends for OECD re- gions. High and Low scenario have been addressed as-well. In these two scenarios, GPD would increase, respectively, by 3.3%/year and 2.7%/year. Analogously, oil price would reach 43 $/barrel in the Low Oil Price scenario, and 226 $/barrel in the High Oil Price one (EIA (2017)). Although the exploitation of renewable energy sources will increase, fossil fuels are expected to continue to meet a large part of world’s energy demand. Petroleum and other liquid fuels are expected to have a large share of world en- ergy even if their usage would decrease from 33% in 2015 to 31% in 2040. It is also forecasted that liquid consumption will increase in industrial and transportation sector, and decline in electric power generation. The transportation sector remains the largest consumer of refined petroleum and other liquids growing from 54% in 2015 to 56% in 2040 (EIA (2017)). In the decade 2005 to 2015 the worldwide number of vehicles has sensibly increased. Passengers cars and commercial vehicles increased from 892,028 in 2005 to 1,282,270 in 2015. The largest growth rate is represented by Asia/Oceania/Middle East area that signed a +141% (International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufac- tures (2015)). Internal Combustion Engines Vehicles (ICEVs) are fre- quently criticized and new regulations to control the envi- ronmental impact of vehicles (e.g., Directive 2017/1347 of 13 July 2017) set new challenges to the automotive sector. Furthermore, the so called ”dieselgate” affair opened the Pandora’s box which led to the approval of a new, stricter emission standard Euro 7 in the EU in late 2018 (Sinay et al. (2018)). The best opportunity to reduce pollutants and Green House Gases (GHGs) emissions (Nemry et al. (2009)) and the relative effect on population health (Hawkins et al. (2012)) is given by the penetration of Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) and Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the passengers cars’ market. The benefits of HEVs and EVs in the operating phase are evident, but their impact from production phase and energy supply (well-to-wheel) can be even worst than conventional ICEVs (Helmers et al. (2017)). In fact, if, and only if, the charging electricity for EVs and Plug-in HEVs (PHEVs) has very low CO 2 and GHGs emissions, they can reach their full potential in mitigating global warming (Girardi et al. (2015)). Penetration of EVs and PHEVs in everyday life has several aspects. Their deployment and their need of fast and diffuse recharging clash with the present infrastructure and topology of the grid (Marra et al. (2017)). In addition, large penetration of the EVs and PHEVs can have great impact on to the power grid, particularly in the case with poor coordination of charging times (Gong et al. (2012)).