Potential external costs savings in new passenger cars distribution

Environmental impacts of the road vehicles manufacturing and usage have been widely studied but very limited considerations have been made about the new vehicles distribution from the assembly plants to the final users. In this paper a methodology is proposed in order to evaluate the external costs of new passenger cars distribution and to estimate the achievable reduction that could be obtained by adopting different transportation modes. Starting from the location of the assembly plants and the models of passenger cars produced in 2013 in Europe, the external costs associated to the flows from the assembly plants to the selected European countries are evaluated. Potential environmental savings are estimated and discussed.