The project is a consortium supported by millions of euros from the German government.
April 20, 2023 at 20:43 ET
The BMW Group has partnered with representatives of the recycling industry, commodity processors and the scientific community to explore the so-called circular economy in car manufacturing. The Car2Car project, supported by a €6.4 million grant from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action, aims to investigate the materials aluminium, steel, glass, copper and plastic.
The project focuses on developing innovative automated dismantling and sorting methods to improve the quality of secondary raw materials obtained from end-of-life vehicle recycling. The goal is to increase the proportion of secondary materials used in new BMW models from 30 to 50 percent.
The BMW Group has set itself the goal of manufacturing new cars with 50 percent recycled materials. The recyclability of the materials is already taken into account during the design process of the new models. The project will provide a representative spectrum of end-of-life vehicles, from Mini cars to Rolls-Royces with combustion engines, plug-in hybrid systems and all-electric powertrains. Project partners will look for ways to improve material flows from closed vehicles and assess how limiting the flow of materials into vehicles affects the quality and purity of secondary raw materials.
The Car2Car consortium aims to recommend an innovative framework that enables an efficient circular economy to deliver greater added value in the future than is possible through conventional linear process chains. Digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI) can automate and speed up the recycling process, which until now has been done manually. The dismantling process can be partially or highly automated using robotic technology.
The integration of optical and AI-assisted detection and sorting systems of reusable materials can significantly improve the quality and purity of materials. The project will develop sensor technology using AI-based material detection and other spectroscopic methods to identify different alloys of steel and aluminum to obtain raw materials with a higher degree of purity.
The BMW Group leads another consortium project, Future Sustainable Car Materials, which works on innovative process routes and material concepts for the sustainable use of secondary materials and to reduce the carbon footprint of raw materials such as steel and the aluminum
