Audi shows end-of-life vehicles offer rich source of materials     

MaterialLoop, a project headed by Audi and including15 participants from the research, recycling and auto supplier sectors, aims to explore the development of a more circular approach to end-of-life vehicle recycling.

Up until now, very few of the non-metal materials used in the production of new vehicles are recovered from scrapped cars. Steel usually ends up as structural steel after end-of-life vehicle recycling.

As part of its circular economy strategy, the German automaker is now looking at the possibilities of reusing secondary materials taken from end-of-life vehicles and recycling them to build new cars. Saving valuable materials and reusing them for production, also reduces emissions and waste, lowering the vehicle’s environmental footprint.

Within the scope of the MaterialLoop project, the partners are seeking solutions to avoid downcycling, which inevitably leads to a lower material quality. The project will run through April 2023.

One of the partners in the project is Circularise, a Dutch provider of digital product passports who contributed expertise in end-to-end supply chain traceability with the use of blockchain technology. Another, WIPAG, is a specialist in sourcing material streams and plastics recycling who provided invaluable support and in-depth knowledge on closed-loop processes.

“The MaterialLoop project underscores our ambitious vision to operate a highly efficient circular economy concept for end-of-life vehicles,” said Audi CEO Markus Duesmann. “It is our goal to recover as many materials as possible at a high level of quality and reuse them in production. This will save valuable primary materials and lower the products’ ecological footprint. Simultaneously, direct access to secondary materials can contribute to increased security of supply. Raw materials would no longer have to be extracted.”

The project started with the dismantling in October 2022 of some 100 vehicles, among them various former development cars. This targeted disassembly of individual components alone resulted in the recovery of high-quality secondary materials, such as larger plastic pieces for recycling.

After disassembly, the remaining car bodies were shredded and, together with the partner companies, sorted into four material groups: steel, aluminium, plastic and glass. Audi then further defined and piloted the recycling process together with project partners from the recycling industry, the Audi supply chain, and research institutes. The aim is to test the reuse of the recycled materials in the production of new cars, as Audi wants to steadily increase the share of recyclates in the Audi fleet over the coming years.

Next to improving the sorting process for the materials recovered from EOL vehicles, Audi is also seeking to optimize the recyclability of new generations of cars through the development of design for circularity best practices. This means that, in terms of material selection, composition and modularity, automotive parts and components should be designed in such a way that they can be sorted by material type during end-of-life recycling.

One outcome of the MaterialLoop pilot project has been the creation of a guide for suppliers explaining how to design plastic parts such as to further increase the rate of recycling in automotive production. The guide was compiled in collaboration with the Volkswagen Group.

The automaker is also experimenting with the use of recycled glass: in another pilot project, glass granulate from car windows beyond repair was melted down and turned into new plate glass for the automotive industry. This glass is used in the Q4 e-tron.

In the PlasticLoop project, Audi partnered with LyondellBasell on the use of chemically recycled mixed automotive plastic waste, to produced mass balanced feedstock that was used to produce seatbelt buckle covers for the series production of the Audi Q8 e-tron.

“Our emphasis on cycles within the industry enables us to use our products and the materials they’re made from for as long as possible. Our vision is to rely less on secondary materials from other industries in the future”, explained Johanna Klewitz, head of supply chain sustainability at Audi.

Added Dennis Meinen, a circular economy expert at Audi: “At its core, circular economy is about handling resources responsibly. Longevity, repairability, and, indeed, our products’ ability to be recycled are thus all in focus.”