The Road Transport Research (RTR) conference, organized by the European Commission, brought together industry experts to discuss the latest advancements and future possibilities in road transport research. One of the themes of the conference was the role of lightweighting projects, such as the ALMA project, and their impact on the European automotive industry. Ms Raquel Ledo from CTAG, project coordinator for ALMA was there to present the project.

ALMA and FLAMINGo co-organised an online workshop on the application of LCA in the automotive sector, supported and with the participation of the other projects from the EnlightEV Cluster. The event discussed different approaches to LCA used in the projects. Read on for a report on the highlights, the recordings in case you missed and the presentations if you would like to find out more.

LCA is specifically important in assessing lightweighting concepts to improve environmental impact. In general, we can expect that lower vehicle weights can be associated with lower environmental impacts, as lighter vehicles will require less energy to move and using less materials should then also decrease the impact during manufacturing. However, this is not always the case, as reducing the weight can come with materials choices that have production methods with more emissions than the ones they replace.