BMW: Greening the automotive industry is about so much more than making electric cars

But decarbonizing automotive manufacturing is far from easy. According to the International Energy Agency, the average is 6 tons of CO2 for manufacturing an internal combustion car, or 8 tons for a battery-electric vehicle. However, knowing where that comes from includes the footprint of a company’s suppliers, not just its direct contributions.

Greening the supply chain

“There is no way to meet the Paris Agreement if you don’t do anything about the supply chain,” argues Becker. “Just swapping the drivetrain will not get you where you need to be. At BMW, we have a steering logic, where we say this is the carbon target figure that we want, this is the gap and then we try to optimize the mix of measures. This only works if you integrate circularity into the work of very many people in the organization who don’t have sustainability in their job description.”

This also extends to suppliers. “Fortunately, our suppliers are committed to getting their piece of the growing availability of renewable energy, whether it’s China, the US or Europe,” says Becker. “However, we need to improve the technical performance and purity of the recycled material we purchase. Our facility in Munich, which is a pilot factory for vehicle dismantling, teaches us a lot about how we can reduce those risks. We also undertook several scientific studies on how to improve recycled material quality, in Germany. We have been part of a French study where we are learning a lot about what we can improve in the future.”

Rather than being a lower-quality choice, innovative recycled materials are becoming desired by customersl. For example, BMW has a material made from flax that looks and behaves like carbon fiber. But, generally, recycled materials must be used where most appropriate. “You can do a lot with recycled plastic if you don’t have to see it,” says Becker. “Inside the doors of the iX, for example, we already have 100% recycled plastic. The bumpers are much more critical than a structural plastic part inside the door or seat, however. We look at all the functional requirements of a given component and then see what is acceptable in terms of recycled material.”

James Morris

Visions of circularity

Recycling automotive materials is much easier if the car was designed with this in mind from the beginning. BMW’s iVision Circular showcased this concept, and a lot of ideas from this prototype have fed into the soon-to-arrive Neue Klasse generation of EVs from the company. “The Neue Klasse will be the first family of products that put sustainability at the core of the product. “We have also invested in decarbonizing the footprint of the platforms that already have a history, but with the Neue Klasse we had the possibility to do it from scratch,” says Becker.

This vision of circularity must start with how a car is manufactured, not just how it is dismantled at the end of its useful life. “One of the big lessons of the Neue Klasse was that you really must rethink material choices and combinations, such as the ability to disassemble different materials without them sticking together even after shredding,” says Becker. “This vehicle will facilitate higher quality recycled materials at the end of its life. We have also reached a higher level of secondary material content with these vehicles.”

The Neue Klasse is primarily intended to be electric, but BMW acknowledges that the growth of the BEV market won’t necessarily be a smooth transition. BEVs experienced a fall in market share in Europe in August. Although BMW now has an extensive and growing range of EVs, which even outsold Tesla in Europe in July, the company has still been hedging its bets by primarily using shared internal combustion engine platforms so it can continue to manufacture both on the same lines. “We think that our flexibility pays off,” says Becker. “If you look at many markets, what people want is a BMW car. They don’t choose based on the drivetrain. It’s about design.”

BMW

Maintaining drivetrain options

Amid the news that BEV sales growth is faltering in Europe, and PHEV sales are burgeoning in China, BMW’s strategy of hedging its bets is looking sensible. “The black and white logic of either this or that is not something we follow,” says Becker. “We believe in various options. The same applies for hydrogen. It’s not about if you are pro BEVs, you must be against PHEVs or the other way around. Or if you are pro-hydrogen, you are obviously hating BEVs. That’s not the case. It is about having more options to choose from. All the feedback we’re getting from our iX5 Hydrogen fleet is very positive.” This car is a prototype hydrogen fuel cell vehicle built into a BMW X5 SUV. There are around 100 of them in the fleet, undergoing testing worldwide for the last year.

BMW makes cars for different drivetrains using a shared platform in the same factory, and most of its BEVs share a platform with internal combustion alternatives. “That’s what we do in Munich,” says Becker. “We plan to do that in Debrecen in Hungary. Across the production network, we will be able to provide the volumes that the market wants. We have demonstrated that investing in this flexibility was money well spent, instead of depending on demand for one given technology for our plants to run at capacity. Other manufacturers have made that mistake.” For example, Volkswagen has had to pause production of the ID.3 and Cupra Born at Zwickau and Dresden due to subdued demand, because these factories have specific EV-only lines. “We want to make sure that we utilize our plants to the greatest extent possible. This flexibility enables us to be more efficient, in a scenario where you are not that sure that volumes are exactly as you’d expect.” 

Although EVs remain expensive, they offer different capabilities to internal combustion engines. “Getting the cost for batteries further down is a strategic priority for everybody in the industry,” says Becker. Cost savings are already feeding into BMW’s current offerings,, the all-electric i5 M60 has performance that is only a bit behind the hybrid internal combustion M5 version 5 series, which is more expensive. “The main purchase reason for BMW is design. We give them all the options and they choose what is best for them. Our EVs are BMWs first and electric cars second, not the other way around.”