Ed Huntress wrote:

"jeff" wrote in message
news:P4hue.2132$G4.2010@trnddc09...

Ed Huntress wrote:

However, the energy consumed in manufacturing a vehicle, as we said

above,

is a miniscule part of the total life-cycle energy consumption of any
vehicle. There's an interesting, easy-to-read white paper that will show

you

what the trends a

A number of years ago a LLNL study put the manufacturing portion of
total life cycle energy consumption of an automobile at close to 50%.
Increased use of plastics, thinner/recycled steel, and greater lifespans
have reduced this somewhat, but it is still in the same order of
magnitude with roughly 1/3 of the total life cycle energy being used
just to build a car. Not what I would call minuscule, but headed in the
right direction.


Manufacturing has never been over 5%. Where did you get that data?

It's expected to go up, with increased use of lightweight materials, but
total life-cycle energy consumption will go down.

--
Ed Huntress



The "close to 50%" was from a casual conversation some 15 years ago with
an engineer in the precision engineering lab at Livermore when I was out
there on a CRADA. It was in large measure based on the 80000 mile throw
away Detroit junk of the late 70s. I haven't been able to lay my hands
on them, but ANL did a lot life cycle modeling of work in that era as
well. Most of the current analysis I see is based around "green" vehicles.

Here's one that gets it down to 10% by claiming a 14 year life cycle for
a 1990 Taurus: http://www.ilea.org/lcas/macleanlave1998.html

Here is one that puts it at 30% http://www.co-design.co.uk/green.htm

Here is one that runs about 20%:
http://www.autosteel.org/pdfs/avc_20...t_analyses.pdf

Where is your less than 5% from, because it flies in the face of
everything I've seen in the past 25 years?.

--
jeff