Recycled plastic trash could boost Cooper Standard in EVs

Cooper Standard Automotive has thrived for decades as a supplier of fluid systems and tubing for internal combustion engines and hydraulic components, as well as sealing around doors and windows.

But the company is facing a two-front challenge: Automakers are speeding into battery- powered electric vehicles and wire-controlled technologies that have different fluid needs than in the past. At the same time, these manufacturers also are pushing for smaller carbon footprints from the supply chain.

For Cooper Standard, the way forward is to innovate with new materials that outperform traditional rubber, says Chris Couch, chief technology officer for the Northville, Mich., manufacturer. The company has developed a proprietary elastomer marketed as Fortrex that it says is up to 30 percent lighter than traditional sealing and tubing materials.

Cooper Standard also is working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to go a step further by making Fortrex out of recycled plastic materials, including discarded water bottles, laundry detergent containers and bags.

"If we're successful in taking it to scale, we would be able to deliver pure post-consumer waste products into our sealing business, as well as our fluids applications," Couch told Automotive News. "It would work in environments where we currently need high-temperature, high-pressure rubber."

Couch believes Fortrex will allow Cooper Standard to cut its products' CO2 footprint by 53 percent over rubber.

"There's a tremendous push towards more sustainable materials," he said. "I can tell you that in the fluids product space in the past, you haven't had the best materials. Rubber hoses are not easily recyclable. And that's just the nature of cured rubber — you can grind it up to recycle it and use it on a football field, but there's only so many of those.

"So we're trying to be very innovative in the material space to use compounds that are from the most sustainable sources we can find."

The stakes are high for developing new material solutions. Last year, Cooper Standard, the world's 76th-largest parts supplier with $2.38 billion in sales to automakers, was involved in 16 of the world's top-selling EVs.

Couch said that while EVs' fluid needs will be different from those of internal combustion engine cars, EVs are far from a deal-killer for fluid line makers. "Based on what we've seen so far, there are more meters of fluids flowing through EV architectures than in an [internal combustion engine] vehicle," he said. "It's true there's no fuel, so that line's gone. But a lot of thermal management has to happen for the battery pack, for the motors and power electronics, for the computers on self-driving vehicles. And all those lines are no longer up front under the hood — they're underneath or behind in the vehicle. So there are more meters of tubing moving that around in the architecture."

Couch believes there will be a competitive advantage in that space in the years ahead for fluid handling products that are both lighter in weight and more sustainable in their design.