MARBEL is an European research project that aims at developing an innovative and competitive lightweight battery with the objective to accelerate the mass market take-up of electric and hybrid vehicles.

This report is the starting point to address the specific objective number 10 of the project by conduction an initial life cycle analysis from an environmental and economic point of view for the reference scenario defined also in this report. In addition, the accomplishing of task 8.1 objectives dedicated to a unified approach & baseline scenario definition.

The reference scenario is the 95kWh (around 84 kWh useable) Audi e-Tron 55 BP battery, whose main characteristics are described in this report and they were required as inputs for the life cycle studies. General methodological aspects adjusted to the existent guidelines for the LCA and LCC are introduced in a section dedicated for that. A detailed development of the methodology to be applied to MARBEL project will be in the D8.2, however, indicators or KPIs to follow the economic and environmental behaviour of the developments and are also defined in this deliverable.

Then, the focus is shifted towards a brief discussion on the present LCA and LCC studies on the existing state-of-the-art lithium-ion  batteries to help to identify key issues related to the scope definition and inventory for this preliminary assessment, as well as, to know the current context and forecast for the LIB production and impacts useful to address the sustainability of these type of batteries in MARBEL project.

Scientific literature, in particular for the battery chemistry of the reference scenario (NMC-622), was the main source for the inventory for the LCA study (Accardo et al [1]). For the LCC calculation, the data source and calculation were conducted by using literature and a public tool (BatPaC) designed by the Argonne Institute to calculate the costs adapted to the LCC approach that will be fully developed later in the project.

Both the LCA and LCC results of the reference scenario show that the active materials associated with the active materials specially involved in the cathode are dominant in the battery pack production life cycle stage. Since MARBEL project is not focused on the chemistry of the battery, actions on this detected hotspot will not be addressed. However, important economic and environmental impacts also influence in the battery pack production stage, that are related to the housing (non-cell components). Hence, improvement on the design of this component is able to potentially decrease the environmental impacts.

This study is focused on the production phase only, and hence, it is foreseen that the environmental performance of MARBEL could improve a little bit against baseline technology. However, the main improvements in terms of environmental gains of MARBEL will be deployed during the use phase will allow better efficiency due to the technical performance. In addition, second life applications and circularity strategies at the end-of-life will be included in the LCA and LCC cradle-to-grave study, which will allow to verify decreasing of allocated impacts

The results that were obtained during the execution of Task 8.1 to which this report is linked have allowed to get the first picture for the economic and environmental performance framed in the existent battery as benchmark as inputs to the Task 8.2, Task 8.3 and WP2.