The British Plastics Federation, the trade association for the plastics industry, held a seminar series at Jaguar Land Rover’s plant in Castle Bromwich, Birmingham, on Thursday November 9th, to focus on changes in the automotives plastics industry in the next decade.
The first of the talks was held by Martin Rees, an analyst of automotive future at Prime Advantage consultancy, who has worked in the Chinese vehicle industry for over a decade, developing car technology in Suzhou, near Shanghai. He focused on the extrapolative improvements in the adoption of low emission mobility, with a pledge from the Chinese government to make all buses in China run on electricity.
He highlighted the opportunities available and worked on by the Department for International Trade from the subsidy program rolled out by the Chinese government to award funds to a hundred electric vehicle firms based in China.
After Rees, Mark Ellis, Materials Technical Specialist at Nissan, discussed the lightweighting direction of plastics for the new electric vehicle fleet. He said: “Nissan is looking at the transformation from the old model of cars, to the future of personal mobility solution. It is a huge step, but our competitors are not going to be the competitors we have today, such as VW and Ford. It could be companies in the electronics industries, or the digital industries such as Google and Uber. The car industry is in a state of flux, and our customers are pushing us where the availability of materials and resources is changing considerably. The legislation and customer requirements are changing. In the short term, weight reduction is the focus to bring down carbon dioxide emissions. In the medium term, electric and hybrid technology is another solution that will drive light weighting.”
Ellis showed how work to reduce vehicle weight is delivering proportionally higher efficiency gains than aerodynamics or fuel conservation.
Following Nissan’s presentation, Ortwin Meuss, of SABIC and Chair of the PlasticsEurope Automotive Task Force, considered the regulatory aims of the European Commission and the challenges presented to car makers in ensuring a low carbon transport system, after which David Bailey, Professor of Industry at Aston University, made his focus on preparadness in the British car industry for leaving the EU, and the options offered for future trading relationships with Europe.
Keith Budden, at Cemex, made a presentation on the opportunities available for PVC and cabling in the move to native, specific electric chassis, becoming the norm.
Axion Recycling’s Keith Freegard showed how his company is managing end of life vehicles for the plastics circular economy, and Jenny Cooper, a polymers development expert with Smithers RAPRA, presented ways of managing plastics degradation and failure in automotive applications.