Benedetta Nucci, Senior Manager Mobility & Life Cycle Assessment, and Patrik Ragnarsson, Director Mobility & Strategic Projects at European Aluminium, discuss the rise of aluminium in cars, now making up 10-15% of vehicle weight. With electric vehicles increasing demand for specific alloys, recycling challenges emerge. They emphasize improving aluminium recovery from end-of-life vehicles, addressing alloy quality, and adapting recycling practices to meet growing sustainability and circularity goals in the automotive industry.
Aluminium alloys account for approximately 10-15% of the average car produced today in Europe, meaning that you can find something like 200 kg of aluminium on average in new cars.This number is very different from what we have seen in the past. In fact, 15 years ago, you could find only 100-120 kg of aluminium in an average car, mostly concentrated in the engine and steering components. We have seen incredible growth in the use of aluminium in cars in the past 20 years, and according to our estimation, this growth is not stopping.
In our most recent forecast, we expect the aluminium content to grow to up to 250 kg per average car in 2030.
This is a great story for the aluminium industry, but there is more to that. It is important to link this trend with the changes we see in the new vehicles.
Traditionally, most of the aluminium was used in powertrain and steering components. Only more recently, in the 2010s, its use in other car components, for example, closures, has started to be relevant.
Today, we are witnessing a change without precedents with the electrification of the fleet. At the same time, as it is the major driver of increasing aluminium content in cars, it also creates new challenges linked to the recycling of aluminium from old vehicles.
The big challenge ahead for our value chain is in finding the right balance in a complex and evolving ecosystem: new types of vehicles are entering the market that call for new components and translate into new and different aluminium alloys compared to those that were used in the past. In parallel, we are witnessing an important push towards increased circularity, especially in the form of increased recycled content requirements in these components and alloys. And all of this, which by itself is already quite complicated, is happening while we navigate a complex geopolitical environment with the growing focus on strategic autonomy for Europe and various trade conflicts, and at the same time, a very strong market pull from car manufacturers side for the decarbonization of vehicles. A key aspect in all of this is to ensure that the potential for the recycling of aluminium coming from end-of-life vehicles is fully exploited!
First of all, in terms of quantity. We need to close the gap between the theoretical amount of aluminium available in ELVs and the amount that is actually collected today. According to our estimates, today only 1/3 of the aluminium available in cars that reaches its end-of life in EU is actually properly and legally collected in the EU. The main cause for this gap is linked to the 4 million vehicles of unknown whereabouts, especially high-end cars. If nothing changes, this gap will increase even further in the coming years due to the increased amount of aluminium in future ELVs that will reach their end of life in 2030-2040 and 2050.
The second aspect to consider is that of the quality of the aluminium that can be recovered from ELVs.
As mentioned earlier, the overall amount of aluminium in new vehicles is increasing and it will increase of additional 50 kg on average per vehicle by 2030.
It is important however to consider that this growth is not equally distributed between aluminium components in a vehicle but that we have “winners” and “losers”. Big “winners” are components linked to the electrification, such as battery box, cooling plates, ballistic protection and e-drive housing, together with mega-castings used for the body-in-white. On the “losers” side, we have powertrain and transmission components.
When we look at the “winners”, those are made mostly of wrought alloys and low-alloyed casting alloys, while the “losers” are mostly made of high-alloyed casting alloys.
In other words, this means that in the future we expect a strong increase in the demand for wrought alloys and low-alloyed casting and a decrease in the demand for high-alloyed castings. The challenge to be tackled is that today almost all the aluminium recovered from ELVs originates from high-alloyed castings applications and not in wrought alloys or low-alloyed castings.
If we look at the aluminium scrap recovered today from ELVs, you can see that it is composed for 75% of casting alloys, while the remaining 25% are wrought alloys.
In 2050, the pie will look different, with half of the scrap being casting alloys and the other half being wrought alloys, mainly from the 6XXX family.
And this is not the only relevant change. In fact, if we look more in details at the casting fraction, its mix will also change between today and 2050. We will definitely witness a growth of the low-alloyed casting in the mix and a decrease of high-alloyed casting.
This may generate a mismatch between the demand of recycled content for the alloys used in new vehicles and the availability of scrap that may be used for those alloys if the recycling practices do not change.
In our view, improving the quality of the aluminium fraction recovered by ELVs by dividing it in several different fractions of different alloy composition is must.
To do this, we see two main ways that are even complementary to each other. On one side, favouring the dismantling for better recycling of specific aluminium components before shredding: this would be the case for engines, wheels, closures, heat exchangers, and bumpers, to name the most important. Dismantling should be focussed on components with known alloy compositions and where the additional work is not too excessive.
On the other side, the use of post-shredding technologies should increase, especially for the technologies that allow the separation of different aluminium alloy families.
Dismantling before shredding could make the work of these post-shredding technologies easier: removing certain components from the car before shredding means that these components and their alloys will not contribute to the mix, and it may reduce the complexity of the separation. Dismantled components may also be treated and recycled separately, generating a mix of scrap of known composition that it is easier to further handle.
We see big changes in the demand for aluminium alloys and we see big changes on the requirements on these alloys. To adapt to this new future, we need to work together with all the actors in the value chain. We do believe that the new ELV Regulation will be instrumental in this.
First, by tackling the issue of unknown whereabouts and illegal export and treatment. This will have an immediate effect on the quantity of scrap available.
Second, by addressing the quality of the aluminium fraction coming from ELV treatment, both through dismantling before shredding and by introducing minimum quality requirements for the shredded fraction.
