Author: Michelin

When it comes to cars and environmental protection, many people’s first reaction may be electric cars.

At the BMW Group’s first Sustainable Development Summit in China on June 3, BMW proposed a new goal of providing customers with the “greenest electric car.”

What is the “greenest” electric car? Does that mean the electric cars we normally use are not environmentally friendly enough?

Friends who have lost weight may be familiar with a term, “calorie deficit,” which means that a person eats fewer calories than they burn every day, creating a calorie deficit, in order to truly lose weight. This calorie deficit is not just about skipping a meal. It requires balancing diet and exercise throughout the day.

Low-carbon and environmentally friendly is like “losing weight” for the earth. When we drive an electric car, it does not produce exhaust emissions. However, if the car exceeds emissions during the production stage and is charged by heavily polluting coal-fired power, and the battery pollutes the land after it is scrapped, it’s like starving all day to lose weight and then binging on hot pot, fried chicken, and crayfish at night, failing to achieve truly low-carbon and environmentally friendly effects.

Therefore, when evaluating whether a car is environmentally friendly, it is not just about whether it uses clean energy. It is also necessary to consider:

• Whether the raw materials used for the car are environmentally friendly?
• Has carbon emissions been reduced during the production stage?
• Can most of the car be recycled and reused after it is scrapped?
• Has there been carbon reduction throughout the entire life cycle of the vehicle?

If the answers to these questions are all “yes”, then obviously, this car is not “green” enough.

So, how can electric cars be made “greener”?

As one of the most complex consumer products for humans, a car consists of more than 30,000 components, each of which embodies the wisdom of upstream and downstream industries and numerous companies.

Statistics show that the carbon emissions generated during the use of a car account for only 14%, while the carbon emissions generated in the supply chain process account for 86%. This 86% of carbon emissions run through the entire life cycle of a car: from a pile of raw materials to a car, transportation to the user, and recycling after the car is scrapped.

In other words, gradually replacing fuel cars with electric cars has indeed contributed to carbon reduction for cars. However, if we want to further reduce carbon emissions, we need to start with the supply chain process of these 30,000 components.

Therefore, reducing emissions and making cars more “green” not only requires efforts from car manufacturers, but also requires collaboration from every link in the supply chain, like a national movement where no single enterprise can be self-sufficient.

At this summit, we saw BMW launch the “Green Transformation Initiative for the Industrial Chain”. The participants not only includes car manufacturers like BMW, but also enterprises from different fields upstream and downstream of the entire industry chain, such as CATL, which provides batteries, Yanfeng Automotive Interiors, which provides interiors and exteriors, Shougang Group, which provides automotive steel, and State Grid EV Service and TELD, which provide charging services.

Only by working collaboratively among these enterprises, from the initial design stage of a car to consider low-carbon environmental protection, and to reduce carbon emissions throughout the entire product lifecycle, from raw material selection and production, to usage and recycling, can the “greenest” cars be produced.

Carbon Reduction for Cars, A Marathon

In September 2020, China proposed the dual carbon goals of “peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060” at the 75th United Nations General Assembly, which opened China’s first year of carbon neutrality. Our starting point is not early, so we need to catch up at a faster pace to achieve green transformation.

Fortunately, carbon neutrality is not an all-out sprint, but a long-lasting relay race that requires teamwork. To win this “relay race,” everyone on the team must keep up and bring their rich experience, technological innovation as an energy supplement, and AI technology to bring more scientific management methods.

Experience, technological innovation, and digital management are all indispensable.

Half a century ago, BMW produced the first-ever electric car for grandfathers – the BMW 1602e – which established its expertise as a leader in the field.

This frontrunner is also an “A-plus student” in carbon reduction: the BMW Brilliance Automotive (BBA) factory uses 100% green electricity, reducing CO2 emissions per car produced by 7.5% compared to 2019.

These are just BMW’s own work on carbon reduction. In order to win the victory in the relay race of automobile carbon reduction, this “excellent student” BMW still needs to use its own experience to drive its teammates in the supply chain to reduce carbon emissions together.

For example, cooperating with CATL to produce high-voltage power batteries using 100% green electricity; jointly developing environmentally friendly intelligent steering wheels with Yanfeng International; cooperating with Shougang to form a closed-loop cycle of supply and recycling of steel materials, making the carbon-emitting giant of steel more environmentally friendly; exploring green energy charging and storage with State Grid, allowing us to use more clean green electricity when charging electric vehicles, etc.

The “excellent student” can bring experience and motivation, but what can really support everyone to go further on the road of low-carbon environmental protection is technological innovation. It is the innovation of energy-saving and emission-reducing technology that reduces the exhaust emissions of fuel vehicles; the innovation of electrification technology that increases the energy density of power batteries, allowing us to use electric cars with higher range; and the breakthrough of fuel cell technology that allows vehicles to use cleaner and zero-emission hydrogen fuel.

This kind of technological innovation is not only in the driving part of the car. Starting from the conception and design stage of a car, sustainable technological innovation runs through its “life”. In the design stage, the aerodynamic coefficient can be reduced by designing the model to reduce energy consumption during vehicle travel; when designing the interior, natural olive leaf extract can be used to make vegetable-tanned leather, reducing the pollution of seat fabrics; no longer using rare earth elements in the electric motor to reduce damage to the natural environment, etc.

These innovative technologies for every component and every link of the car make a car more environmentally friendly and sustainable without sacrificing driving pleasure, comfort and power.

In addition to technological innovation, the digitization of management using artificial intelligence, big data, and other technologies can make the goal of “sustainable development of the automobile industry”, which is invisible and intangible, into visible numbers.

Using big data and AI technology, the energy efficiency of each link of automobile production, use, and recycling can be tracked, and the carbon utilization efficiency of the entire process can be detected to optimize and manage automobile production. Like solving mathematical problems to find the optimal solution, AI technology can arrange different innovative technologies in automobile production to work together and achieve the effect of 1+1>2.

At the same time, digital management also makes automobile carbon reduction more intuitive. Using big data can track the whereabouts of retired power batteries, such as using them in forklifts and tool cars, and finally recycle the raw materials of dismantled waste batteries to maximize their contribution, achieving the goal of “waste not, want not”.In March this year, BMW Group published its first integrated Sustainable Report and Corporate Report, and also became the first in the industry to publicly and transparently disclose progress in carbon reduction. The measurable goal, which is the result of digital management of carbon reduction, is to reduce the average carbon dioxide emissions of a single vehicle throughout its lifecycle by one-third compared to 2019 by 2030, through green transformation driven by technological innovation, upstream and downstream collaboration along the industrial chain, and scientific and intuitive digital management. By 2030, BMW aims to reduce emissions by 20% in the supply chain, 80% in the production process, and 40% in vehicle use by accelerating the transformation to electrification.

At present, BMW has implemented more than 400 AI technologies across various departments, based on technological innovation to promote green transformation, upstream and downstream collaboration along the industrial chain, and scientific and intuitive digital management.

“Building the greenest electric vehicles” is not just a slogan, but also requires adjustment of production lines, replacement of new equipment, research and development of innovative technologies, and transformation of product lines, which means a lot of time and capital investment. This raises the question: “Is such a huge investment worth it?”

If we only look at the present, the investment is indeed huge, and even requires effort to persuade partners in the industrial chain to jointly reduce carbon emissions. However, if we look to the future and see that sales of new energy vehicles are increasing year by year and are taking market share from fuel vehicles; see that both the EU and China are increasingly quantifying their assessment of carbon reduction, with carbon credits becoming a tradable market; and see that the market and policies are forcing car companies and suppliers in the automotive supply chain to pick up the pace, then the investment in green transformation now is an investment in the future, a proactive investment rather than a forced transformation.

Nowadays, more and more consumers are attracted by the concept of environmental protection and sustainable development. When two products with similar prices and experiences are presented, more users will choose the environmentally friendly one. The assessment of companies is also gradually shifting from traditional financial performance to comprehensive evaluation of ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance performance). Sustainable development has become an increasingly important plus factor for a car or a company.

Perhaps in the near future, “no sustainability, no luxury” will become a new label for everyone to evaluate a luxury car brand, but before that, more cooperation and efforts are needed among car companies and suppliers. “Building the greenest electric vehicles” has never been a one-person fight.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.