pure electric vehicles. Hydrogen will bring another aspect into recycling that will impact recyclers in the future, one that we will cover at another time.

The Future isn’t Now Advanced technology, such as Autono-

mous Emergency Braking, Lane Depar- ture Warning, Smart Cruise Control and more are leading towards a fully auton- omous future for motor vehicles. The time when every vehicle on the road will have full autonomy is potentially many years away due to a number of factors, including legislation, liability, communi- cations, customer acceptance, highway maintenance, vehicle maintenance and other factors. Once every new vehicle has to have full autonomy it will be a number of years before this autonomous ability will spread to the majority of the vehicles in use (don’t forget the average vehicle age in the U.S. is 12 years), and once it is at that level, the eldest vehicles with

Less total losses and more repairs equals more opportunities to sell parts.

full autonomy will have to be updated to the latest standards so that all vehi- cles can work together, which brings the question of who is going to pay for these upgrades and if it is the vehicle owner then what happens if they do not have the upgrade completed?

Technology Recycling Upside There are plenty of benefits to this

technology, including a vast number of high value components that can be re-sold by vehicle recyclers, including cameras, radars, ultrasonic sensors and more. Smart recyclers will also have the opportunity to up-sell additional services to calibrate these components to work properly in a vehicle being repaired.

Any work completed to one of these components will mean the vehicle needs re-calibration, a new windscreen will result in a re-calibration, replacement suspension components or a geometry adjustment will force a re-calibration, and so on. The kit and training to re-cal- ibrate these vehicles is not expensive and could see a return on investment within two years. It would give sales staff the ability to sell components and sell the calibration service, give a marketing edge over local competition, and could bring new customers to the business be- cause your prices and speed of booking may be cheaper and quicker than the local franchised dealer.

In the short term, this technology will also help recyclers sell more parts. It is true that the systems are preventing low speed impacts, however impacts are still occurring at higher speeds, the differ- ence is that the electronic systems are reducing the impact speed so what may have been a total loss before is now a

AUTOMOTIVE RECYCLING • July-August 2018

27