Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology
Electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid cars will be an opportunity to drastically innovate mobility products and services in the direction of sustainability and of higher accessibility for customers. If coupled with innovative services offered by car manufacturers in a network of well-coordinated partners supporting extensive and efficient End-Of-Life operations, the advent of EVs could revolution the current mobility consumption uses of people and preserve the environment much more than the only substitution of traditional cars with EVs could do. Remanufacturing, reuse and recycling would become the strategies upon which car manufacturers would base future competitiveness, leveraging on the benefits of costs saving and, at the same time, guaranteeing environmental benefits and superior performances to customers.
However, there are substantial barriers to implement these new business models. The main one is developing adequate capabilities to remanufacture and reuse EVs’ components and materials in order to provide customers with added value. This is significantly difficult especially form the technological point of view, since EVs determine a fundamental transformation in the car design, featuring a substantial evolution in the critical car components and materials.
The CarE-Service project will demonstrate new enabling technologies and services to systematically perform innovative reuse and remanufacturing as key-processes to provide value to customers and, at the same time, to minimise environmental impact.