| Summary: | Shared mobility, automated vehicle technology, and vehicle electrification have the potential to dramatically reshape road transportation. Despite the large potential of shared automated electric vehicles (SAEVs) to significantly improve mobility systems, societal and economic factors, there are remaining concerns about their environmental and energy-related effect over their lifetime. This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a shared autonomous and electric (SAE) regional mobility service to explore the environmental implications of a fleet deployment. A flow-based optimization approach was applied to obtain the future SAE fleet configuration for one passenger and four passenger’s vehicle capacity based on one-year travel demand of a medium-size region. Life cycle impact assessment of the SAEVs system was modeled considering different electricity generation scenarios and the impact categories: global warming potential, stratospheric ozone depletion, tropospheric ozone formation, fine particulate formation, and terrestrial acidification were evaluated. Results highlight that the implementation of SAEVs services should consider the maximum vehicle occupation to reduce the impacts of the system during the use phase as well as the incorporation of electricity generated by renewable sources (namely, wind and photovoltaic power systems). This analysis points for opportunities to improve environmental and energy performance of mobility systems with the usage of regional SAEVs.
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