Circular Design Frameworks and Tools for Energy-Using Components in the Automotive Industry: A Systematic Literature Review on Usability, Integration, and Sustainability Trade-Offs

The transition toward a Circular Economy in the automotive industry demands robust eco-design strategies for complex, energy-using, mechatronic systems. This systematic literature review critically evaluates 30 publications representing 27 distinct frameworks and computational tools for active automotive components. Using a customized Usability Scorecard on a 1–5 quantitative scale, solutions were benchmarked across workflow integration, performance trade-offs, End-of-Life, and Critical Raw Material (CRM) management. Systematic review findings reveal significant methodological gaps: circa 52% of evaluated tools exhibit low CAD/PLM workflow integration relying on manual data entry, while only 30% achieve high integration. For trade-off analysis, most tools, about 80%, rely on static multi-criteria weighting or use offline optimization. Furthermore, CRM tracking is unaddressed in 44% of the tools, rising to circa 60% including purely conceptual methods, with only 22% offering dedicated metrics or Digital Product Passport (DPP) readiness for material traceability. Based on these review findings, future research should investigate and validate automated, open-source AI-driven plug-ins leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and Digital Twins embedded directly in engineering environments to translate Circular Economy principles and metrics into daily design practices.