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What does the automotive industry do for the environment?

Sustainable mobility has ceased to be a play to the gallery to become an obligation. A need. By conviction, or in view of the need to survive an increasingly restrictive regulation in terms of pollution, large car manufacturers have had to adapt to the race. In this process, they have managed to develop cars with more efficient internal combustion engines and, at the same time, vehicles powered by alternative propulsion systems.

It can be said that the environmental awareness has completely permeated the sector, and the proof of this is that the latest editions of the greatest international shows have been a litany of presentations of electric vehicles, hybrids, plug-in hybrids or hybrids powered by fuel cells. Any solution means a progress in that race against the time that is the climatic change and in which the transport has had a big responsibility.

 

However, this awareness of the sector must also be reflected in the driver. In this sense, the data indicate that between January and September of this year more than 85% of hybrids and electric cars were registered in Europe, what confirms that we are on the right track.

 

The awareness has penetrated so deeply that all the major car groups work with an electric horizon in the agenda that, in most cases, is set for the next decade. Launch policy on the margin, this new way of seeing things also affects their manufacturing processes and their investment in competition.

 

Cleaner production plants

 

The conversion of the automotive sector also covers its manufacturing plants. These plants do not only produce less polluting cars, but also produce them by contaminating less and making a more efficient use of resources.

 

Awareness has entered so deeply that all major car groups work with an electric horizon on the agenda.

 

The manufacture of a car is a complex process in which logistics also takes its part in the resource consumption.

 

The formula of the new times

 

The conversion of the sector is also affecting what is its main laboratory and testing ground: the competition. Apart from the hybridisation of the propulsion system of the Formula One and the World Endurance Championship (WEC), the category that best illustrates this new stage is the Formula E. Born almost by the demands of the market in 2014, three years later, few dared to doubt the feasibility and, above all, the future of this competition of, one hundred percent, electric cars.

Renault and Citroën wanted to take part in this championship since its beginning. Jaguar landed with an official seal past year, but the best is yet to come. This season 2017/2018 Audi takes part as an official team and, from the next season, BMW will participate too. They will be just early adopters of other great premium German manufacturers who have seen in this competition of electric single-seaters a more attractive and coherent formula for these new times.

 

 

These plants do not only produce less polluting cars, but also produce them by contaminating less and making a more efficient use of resources.

 

Both Porsche and Mercedes will arrive in 2019 and they will do so by sacrificing, respectively, the WEC and the DTM, championships that can not compete with Formula E in terms of the potential to develop more efficient and powerful electric propulsion systems with greater autonomy. Nissan will replace its Alliance partner, Renault, in this championship that will have its first Season Prix in Hong Kong on the first weekend of December.

 

Electric ecosystem

 

Just as technology companies knew how to take the opportunity provided by the explosion of smartphones and tablets, leading car manufacturers have been investigating how to integrate electric and smart cars in this interconnected puzzle that will be, according to the experts, society of the future. But above this vision, there is another one, much more real, that wants to provide a second life to the batteries of electric cars.

 

BMW and Nissan already have the technology to converts those batteries that have completed their cycle into electric models in mobile energy devices. In a domestic use, these huge batteries make the function of accumulation systems to manage more intelligently the flow of the energy in the home, either by resorting to it at times when the cost of electricity is higher or to prioritize sources of energy that are renewable. The Japanese brand estimates that the savings can be up to 400 euros per year.

 

The advantage of the second life of the batteries of the electric cars is double, since it allows to amortize its cost in the longer term and, in addition, it allows to replace them with more advanced ones, with greater energy density and, therefore, greater autonomy.