Produced | Tiger Sniff Car Group
The author | Master Zi Nan
Pure electric vehicles that use electricity as an energy source have been criticized by some insiders as "not environmentally friendly" because of the use of electricity emitted by non-renewable energy sources such as coal.
This view has been used by Toyota Akio and other auto industry tycoons to shell electric vehicles. From the perspective of the automotive industry, there is nothing wrong with views like Akio Toyoda's. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, thermal power generation, which is mainly coal-fired power generation, accounts for 71.19% of the country's power generation. Therefore, in the use of electric vehicles, environmental protection is still a problem.
But if you put the environmental protection of the car into a more macro perspective, Akio Toyoda's view is negative and one-sided.
The literal meaning of "sustainable environmental protection" has been reminding companies that if they are "unsustainable", the life of enterprises is also "unsustainable".
Nowadays, the wind direction of the policy has also changed, and the development idea of "pollution first and then treatment" is no longer encouraged. Car companies do not want to protect the environment, and the policy forces enterprises to protect the environment. Relying on this line of thinking, China's automobile industry has derived a double credit policy for new energy vehicles, and enterprises that produce more fuel vehicles than electric vehicles need to purchase points from new energy vehicle companies to continue to produce fuel vehicles.
In the context of carbon neutrality, the idea of forcing enterprises to "environmental protection" is no longer limited to guiding enterprises to build clean energy vehicles. As carbon neutrality continues to advance, the prices of non-renewable energy sources such as oil and coal are no longer friendly. For companies that are not environmentally friendly, production costs will rise rapidly in the foreseeable future.
Car companies began to face another problem, how to make the process of building cars also environmentally friendly? Environmental protection is no longer the "social responsibility" of car companies, but a question that car companies must answer.
If you can save, you can save
According to the incomplete statistics of Tiger Sniff, most mainstream car companies have issued a "carbon reduction schedule".
In June this year, Great Wall Motor announced that it will build its first zero-carbon plant in 2023 and establish a recycling system for the automotive industry.
In addition, more than 10 multinational car companies such as Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler and Porsche have announced their carbon neutrality schedules or carbon reduction plans. Among them, the Volkswagen Group has made it clear that it will achieve carbon neutrality by 2050; the BMW Group plans to achieve carbon neutrality in its Chinese plants by the end of this year and strive to reduce emissions by 20% in collaboration with suppliers by 2030; and Porsche has announced that it will achieve carbon neutrality across the entire value chain by 2030.
The plan is very radical, so what are the car companies going to do?
Before answering this question, we need to know which parts of the car are not environmentally friendly. The carbon emissions of automobiles are divided into three stages: parts supply chain, production and manufacturing, and use cycle. Among them, the carbon neutrality of the use cycle needs to be improved in the energy structure, but the carbon neutrality of the first two stages can be improved by enterprises relying on their own strength.
How to build a car environmentally friendly? BMW Brilliance provides a sample. The first step is to adopt environmentally friendly power resources. In September this year, China opened its first green electricity (green electricity is generated by renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic, wind and hydropower) trading. In this transaction, BMW bought 2.78 billion kWh of green electricity in one go, accounting for 35% of the country's total transaction volume.
This move increased the production cost of BMW Brilliance in a short period of time. However, according to relevant sources, the current price of green electricity is slightly higher than that of industrial electricity, and with the advancement of carbon reduction, the comprehensive cost of green electricity will be lower than that of thermal power in the future.
In addition to the use of green electricity, the main idea of car companies is to cut the details, and all the places that can save energy are improved.
In order to make the factory more energy-efficient, BMW Brilliance built tracks in the factory to transport vehicles to the railway station. In the past, this section of the road needed to be done by truck, but now it is only possible to use an electrified train. In addition, BMW Brilliance also placed photovoltaic charging panels in the factory.
However, in order to complete the carbon neutrality of the car manufacturing process, it is not enough to let the car companies themselves save energy. During the entire car manufacturing process, automakers' component suppliers emit about 75% of carbon. Therefore, the suppliers of some car companies have also begun to be "forced" to save energy and reduce emissions.
According to BMW Brilliance, it has begun to focus on improving the transparency of carbon emissions in the supply chain system and requiring energy conservation and emission reduction for some suppliers. For example, BMW's interior panel supplier Jinbei Yanfeng plans to start production with 100% green electricity power supply starting in January 2022. Improvements are made to processes with higher carbon emissions in the manufacturing process.
At present, BMW Brilliance has cooperated with 20 suppliers in carbon reduction.
In addition to BMW, Volkswagen has adopted the same strategy to guide suppliers to reduce carbon. Volkswagen recently revealed that it plans to use 100% green electricity in its fuel vehicle business and suppliers by 2030.
Cars are built from recycled materials
The idea of saving is used not only in the energy side, but also in the raw material side.
In the field of raw materials such as steel, aluminum, plastics and rubber used in car manufacturing, BMW Brilliance has adopted a recycling strategy. The company's first recycled steel closed-loop production system, created in collaboration with steel suppliers, will achieve a total of 45,000 tons of steel recycling and closed-loop production in China in 2020. In terms of power battery production, BMW Brilliance also plans to use 100% recycled aluminum.
A production line for the treatment of scrap steel in BMW Brilliance's plant
Such a move would significantly reduce carbon emissions from the production of components. For example, renewable aluminum, compared with the raw material aluminum, the amount of carbon dioxide savings is about 4-6 times, while steel and thermoplastics savings are about 2-5 times.
At present, about 30% of BMW Brilliance's parts use recycled materials. For example, in the high-voltage power battery equipped with the flagship electric SUV model iX, the amount of secondary nickel is 50%, and the proportion of secondary aluminum in the shell is 30%.
On components such as interior panels, the proportion of recycled materials used is also increasing. According to BMW's supplier Jinbei Yanfeng, in addition to the scrap generated in some factory production, some of the recycled materials used in the model also come from recyclable plastic bottles and waste steel. After recycling, these materials are granulated and eventually become raw materials for automotive interior panels, frames and other parts.
BMW Brilliance plans to use recycled materials as raw materials for 50% of the parts in the car by 2025. At that time, a part of a BMW may come from a waste can or plastic bottle.
In addition to BMW, audi and other car companies have also begun to use recyclable materials to build cars. According to Audi, the new Audi A3 uses renewable materials in its seat and foot pads. Among them, 89% of the fabric material in the seat uses recycled PET plastic bottles, which are spun into yarn after processing. Each seat uses up to 45 PET plastic bottles with a capacity of 1.5 liters.
In addition, Polestar's 3D flying line car seats are made of renewable materials, which use fibers from recycled PET plastic bottles, linings and headrests made from recyclable cork fibers, and carpets from recycled fishing nets.
However, it should be mentioned that these renewable raw materials are reducing carbon while also increasing the cost of car companies and suppliers. According to data from third-party analysts, after the entire automotive industry chain achieves carbon neutrality, the manufacturing cost of a complete vehicle will increase by 2% compared with now. Before carbon neutrality is achieved, the cost of carbon reduction for car companies will be higher.
This means that future cars will be more expensive than today's cars while using cans and other manufacturing materials. Would you buy such a car?