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Sustainable design is critical for the future of the automotive industry
L THE DRIVE FOR M
ost governments in industrial leading countries have understood that we could not continue with an economy
driven only based on growth. Tankfully in the past few years, the slowing down of economy has offered us the opportunity to reflect on ourselves and to change things with regards to our responsibility towards our children and the next generations. Knowing that the increasing demand for energy and resources in all its forms worldwide will not help to solve the problem, our society is forced to change things – and to change them now. Although decarbonising the electricity
production will be realised with renewables, nuclear and gas in the coming decades, the curve of the increasing energy demand must be flattened. Lightweight construction is a big
part of the solution. Light weighting is a needed process in many applications. It is concerning to the whole mobility sector and is concerning all things that move in industry (e.g. industrial robots carrying larger than needed EOAT). Te added value of lightweight
construction is not easy to be understood or recognised by end-customers and
Proof-of-concept car seat design
politics, as you cannot touch it. Light weight as such is already sustainable because fewer primary resources are used during manufacturing and less energy will be consumed during usage.
Claude Maack argues that light weight is equal to sustainability
IGHTWEIGHTING
When adding the aspect of the CO2 footprint of the whole process, starting
with how to exploit resources from the ground (such as lithium for batteries) to the process of manufacturing of a whole vehicle, as well as continued energy consumption during product usage, by taking into account the energy mix of the electric grid and, last but not least, how to revalorise the materials used with regards to the circular economy aspect, it is complex to make the difference. Terefore, a standardised tool for measuring the sustainability index and thus reduce the complexity down to a level that could be understood by decisionmakers and stakeholders will help in future. By knowing that aluminium has a footprint compared to steel
high CO2
and that carbon fibres have a CO2 footprint that is eight times higher
compared to basalt fibres, it is not easy for a decision maker to evaluate if the electric vehicle he wants to buy is now good or bad for the saving the planet. Tus, decisionmakers are not tackling
the root of the problem when deciding to tax CO2
only. Taxing the mass of a
vehicle would be better. Considering the CO2
footprint of the whole process
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