## 3 Life Cycle Impact Assessment: Results and Interpretations
### Comparison of the LDCV Vehicles: Diesel, NMC111-BEV, and ZEBRA-BEV  
Figures 7 and 8 compare the LCA impacts of the three versions of the vehicle, i.e., two electric LCDVs equipped with two NMC battery packs (NMC-BEV) and two ZEBRA battery packs (ZEBRA-BEV) as well as a conventional LCDV equipped with a Diesel engine (DIE-ICEV). The impacts were normalised to the highest score in each category. The impacts of each vehicle configuration in Figure 8 are split into the following contributions:  
* Battery production (light blue bar): this includes the production of the cathode, battery cell, and non-cell materials and includes the total energy required for the manufacturing and the contributions of the battery transport from the manufacturing plant to the customer. * Vehicle production (dark blue bar): this includes all the processes, that is, from component production to distribution of the vehicle on the market [35]. * Maintenance (green bar): this takes vehicle maintenance into account. Maintenance was modelled according to [35]. * Battery losses (Magenta bar): these account for the amount of electricity lost during the recharging phase along the lifespan of the battery and are estimated according to Section 2.2.2.2. * Vehicle use phase (red bar): Well-To-Wheel energy consumption and emissions from the vehicle use phase were calculated by means of a backward-facing model of the LDCV case study, as detailed in Section 2.2.2.1. With reference to electric configurations, NMC-BEV (blue line in Figure 7) appears to be slightly better than ZEBRA-BEV (green line). A Monte Carlo analysis of the environmental impact estimations was carried out for these two configurations (see the Appendix A). It was shown that NMC-BEV has lower impacts than ZEBRA-BEV for 90-100% of the Monte Carlo runs, i.e., according to the guidelines reported in [47], the impact of NMC-BEV can be considered significantly lower than that of ZEBRA-BEV. The electric configurations both show significant advantages, with respect to DIE-ICEV (red line in Figure 7), albeit only for GWP, ADP-FF, POP, and ODP. This can mainly be ascribed to the vehicle use phase (Figure 8). The three vehicle configurations have quite similar impacts for CED, whereas DIE-ICEV appears to be significantly more environ  
The above-described differences can mainly be ascribed to the different impacts of the use phase for most of the impact categories (ADP-FF, GWP, ODP, HTP, F-ECOTP, M-ECOTP, T-ECOTP, EP, POP). The use stage impact of the electric vehicles is lower for the ADP-FF category, due to the higher efficiencies of the electric powertrains than the diesel one. For GWP, 87% of the DIE-ICEV use stage contribution is due to tailpipe CO\({}_{2}\) emissions. As far as ODP is concerned, the high use stage contribution of DIE-ICEV is due to the release of refrigerants from the on-shore extraction of oil and gas (Well-To-Tank contribution). With reference to HTP, F-ECOTP, M-ECOTP, and T-ECOTP, the electric versions perform worse in the use stage, since the generation of electricity using fossil fuels produces toxins. For  
Figure 8: (**a–d**) The LCA of the conventional diesel vehicle (DIE-ICEV), the electric vehicle with two NMC111 battery packs (NMC-BEV), and the electric vehicle with two ZEBRA battery packs (ZEBRA-BEV). The contributions from the production and use-phase of the battery and vehicle and from vehicle maintenance are highlighted for each impact category; no EoL is considered here. POP, the high use stage contribution of DIE-ICEV is mainly due to NOx and NMVOC tailpipe emissions. The impact of NMVOC emissions has been estimated according to the hydrocarbon emission speciation reported in [48; 49; 50]. The use-phase POP from electric powertrains is mainly due to energy carrier production, namely to the contribution of coal to electricity generation. Finally, EP is higher for the use stage of the electric versions due to Well-To-Tank phosphate emissions to water as a result of the disposal of spoils and subphidic tailings during hard coal mining operations.