Jaguar works on a plan to give aluminum a second life

By CRM staff

Toronto, Ontario — April 17, 2019 — Jaguar Land Rover is now in the next phase of its aluminum closed-loop strategy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as well as its need for new aluminum.

The British OEM’s Reality project outlines its plan to recycle the aluminum from its old cars to make components of new models.

The process is currently being tested on early, pre-production Jaguar I-PACE prototypes which have had their batteries safely removed. These batteries enter into their own second-life process which Jaguar Land Rover is developing while the scrap from the vehicles is sorted into various materials using high-tech sensors. Once separated, the aluminum scrap is melted and reformed.

When operating at full capacity, the project is expected to reduce the CO2 impact of production while reducing the amount of new aluminum required to produce vehicles. Jaguar Land Rover has already reduced its global vehicle manufacturing operating CO2 by 46 percent per vehicle and remains committed to an ongoing decarbonization process.

The pioneering project, co-funded by Innovate UK, is helping Jaguar Land Rover extend its closed-loop aluminum economy. Between September 2013 and January 2019, around 300,000 tonnes of closed-loop scrap have been processed back into the brand’s lightweight aluminum-intensive architecture, across all vehicle lines including XE.

Jaguar Land Rover currently uses 180,000 tonnes of aluminum per year which is a small percentage of the 80 million tonnes produced globally each year. It is already one of the most widely recycled materials with 75 percent of all aluminum ever produced still in circulation.