Circular Economy in the Automotive Industry: How Material Selection, Vehicle Design and Recycling Work Together

The new EU End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation is increasing pressure on the automotive industry to keep plastics and other materials in the loop for longer. At the same time, composite materials, long product life cycles and strict quality requirements make implementation challenging. Three examples show the role that material selection, vehicle design and recycling can play.

When a vehicle reaches the end of its service life, it leaves behind more than just steel, aluminium and copper. Plastics also play a significant role: around 200 kilograms of plastic waste are generated from each end-of-life vehicle. The challenge is to recover these materials at the highest possible quality and return them to the production cycle.

Whether this can be achieved is largely determined during the design phase. Vehicles must meet stringent safety and quality requirements and often remain in service for many years. To ensure that materials can be kept in circulation later on, material selection, component design and ease of dismantling must be considered from the outset.

This is precisely where the new EU End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation comes in. Among other objectives, it aims to increase the use of recycled content, improve vehicle dismantling and promote the recovery of valuable raw materials.

The choice of materials also influences how products are manufactured, used and ultimately recovered at the end of their life cycle. As a result, the automotive industry is increasingly exploring alternative feedstock sources.

One example is a bio-based leather alternative made in part from residues generated during apple processing. The concept uses by-products from the food industry and integrates them into new value chains. In doing so, it highlights an approach that addresses the raw-material dimension of the Circular Economy.

A key prerequisite for closed material loops is established during the development of vehicles and components. Materials must be selected and integrated in a way that allows them to be easily separated, sorted and recycled at the end of their service life.

This approach is reflected in concepts such as Covestro’s SUE People Mover and the reECONIC concept vehicle. While differing in their implementation, both demonstrate how circularity can be considered from the earliest stages of material selection and product design. Examples include mono-material approaches and designs that facilitate the dismantling of components.

At the end of a vehicle’s life cycle, the key question is how the materials used can be recovered at the highest possible value.

This challenge is being addressed by the Car2Car research project at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Researchers are investigating how plastics from end-of-life vehicles can be sorted and processed in a way that enables their reuse in automotive applications. The goal is closed-loop recycling, keeping materials in circulation for as long as possible.

The challenge is considerable. Once end-of-life vehicles have been shredded, complex material streams containing different plastics, metals and other materials are created. Producing high-quality recyclates from these streams requires the various plastic fractions to be identified and separated as accurately as possible.

The project highlights the potential of advanced sorting and recycling technologies. At the same time, it demonstrates the close link between recycling and vehicle development: the easier materials are to identify and separate, the greater the opportunity to return them to high-value applications.

Circular Economy in the automotive industry is not a single solution but a challenge that spans the entire vehicle life cycle. Material selection, product design and recycling processes must be aligned to keep materials in circulation for as long as possible.

The new EU End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation is expected to further accelerate this transition. More stringent requirements for recycled content, vehicle dismantling and circularity are increasing pressure on manufacturers and suppliers to integrate material loops into product development and production processes.

At the same time, significant challenges remain. Complex material combinations, stringent quality requirements and the limited availability of high-quality recyclates continue to complicate the implementation of closed-loop systems. However, many of the necessary building blocks are already in place. The key challenge will be to connect them more effectively across the value chain.

Whether materials can remain in circulation is not determined only at the end of a vehicle’s life cycle.

In the automotive industry, Circular Economy does not begin with the recycling of end-of-life vehicles. It starts much earlier – with material selection, vehicle design and feedstock strategy.