Three visions of a circular economy for cars

The circular economy is a vital part of the transition to a sustainable future. It’s how we make manufactured items sustainable, moving from a system of use and disposal to a model of reuse and repair. That’s easy enough to imagine with small items, but what does it look like for cars?

In order to make a car fit for the circular economy, we’d need to start with reducing the amount of materials used. We’d need to choose those materials carefully, and we’d need a plan for reusing everything at the end of the vehicle’s useful life. Here are three companies that are demonstrating each of those principles – all of them with electric vehicles, naturally.

Citroen are doing some radical things in reducing their material requirements. They’ve recognised that material choices and efficiency go together. The less material, the less weight and the smaller the battery can be. That keeps prices down, takes the pressure off resource supplies and reduces damage from extraction.

The vehicle that takes this furthest is the Citroen Oli, a rather playful concept car that uses honeycomb construction techniques and has body panels made of cardboard. Here’s a video explaining the idea:

The Oli is a concept and hasn’t gone into production, but this stripped down aesthetic can be seen in the Citroen Ami, their urban microcar. It simplifies the number of components by having the same panel at the front and the rear, for example, and an identical back window and windscreen. Fewer components makes cars cheaper, reduces emissions in production, and makes them easier to dismantle and reuse later.

The choice of materials matters too, and here we can look at what BMW are up to. They pioneered a number of progressive ideas with their i Vision Circular concept and with the i3, which served as a pilot for a sustainable electric BMW. We’re now seeing the learning from those projects coming through in their new designs. From 2025, their ‘Neue Klasse‘ range will bring circularity to the fore.

BMW have made it easy to remove and replace components, with design for disassembly. Hybrid products that combine materials have always been a problem for recycling (see the infamous Pringles tube). BMW avoid mixed materials and make panels and parts from just one material as often as possible.

As well as being recyclable at the end, many of their materials are made from recycled materials at the beginning too. Floor mats are made from discarded fishing nets and recycled carpets. Plastic skirts and bumpers are 100% recycled plastic. Looking to the future, BMW expects its own older cars to be a big source of quality recycled materials, and it is partnering with other manufacturers in a circular economy project called Car2Car.

That brings me to Fisker, relatively unfamiliar on British roads so far but hopefully on their way to bigger things. Their mission as a company is to “create the world’s most emotional and sustainable vehicles”. I’m not sure what they’re getting at with the first half of that aim, but the second half means attention to detail when it comes to sourcing, using and disposing of materials.

In the interests of transparency, there’s a full life-cycle assessment on the website for the Fisker Ocean, their first mass market offering. It lists the materials used and the carbon impact of each of them. It shows where they came from, as close to local as possible, with 77% of suppliers located with 1,000 km of the factory in Austria. The end of the car’s life has been considered from the start, with a step-by-step process in place for dismantling and processing. Some parts will be remanufactured and used in new cars. By the end of the process 95% of the materials are reused or recycled, with a residual 5% left.

Among the components that Fisker will reuse entirely are the batteries, which is of course a recurring concern with electric cars. There are ethical issues around cobalt and lithium extraction in particular. Those are not simple to resolve, but fully recycling battery materials is a big part of the solution.

These three companies are by no means alone. I could mention how Kia are including QR codes on their components so that users can look up exactly what the car is made from. Renault opened a ‘refactory‘ at the end of last year, Europe’s first circular economy car plant that aims to refurbish and recycle their cars. Stellantis, which runs the Vauxhall van factory here in Luton, has a long term circular economy plan.

Cars remain a mixed blessing, and renegotiating our relationship with them remains a big priority. But where they are needed, they can be made sustainably and that work is already underway.