October 2023

The study builds on the report "Repair versus Replace" published earlier this year and extends the results on the VolkswagenID.3 with analyses on its combustion engine counterpart, the Golf VIII.

The AZT not only acted as a contact partner for technical details and methodological issues in life cycle analysis (LCA), but was also able to offer the students exciting insights into the fields of accident research, e-mobility and sustainability on site.

The main finding of the study is that the ecological footprint of a repair does not differ, or only slightly, between e-vehicles and combustion engines for a large part of the damage. This is especially true for parts of the outer body shell, with minor differences mostly due to different part dimensions caused by different designs. Damage to the high-voltage battery of e-vehicles turned out to be critical, which was analysed using underbody damage of varying severity as an example. If the battery is damaged so severely that it has to be partially or even completely replaced, this results in massive costs on both the ecological and the monetary side - also in direct comparison to the combustion engine.

Details on the study and the results can be found here.