It's made entirely out of recycled materials and all parts can be reused once the car reaches its end of life. At least that's the BMW premise for the release of the i Vision Circular.
The four-seater offers a generous amount of interior space within its around four-metre-long footprint. It has furthermore been designed according to circular economy principles and symbolises the BMW Group’s ambitious plan to become the world’s most sustainable car maker.
The Vision Vehicle is one of five different concept vehicles with which BMW is presenting how it views individual urban mobility at the IAA Mobility 2021 event. Under a single umbrella spanning electric mobility, digitalisation and sustainability, the five concepts create a mobility mix on two and four wheels.
The design goal for the BMW i Vision Circular was to create a vehicle that is optimised for closed materials cycles and achieves 100% use of recycled materials and can also be fully recycled.
This involves making use of materials that have already completed a product life cycle – or secondary materials as they are known – alongside certified bio-based raw materials.
The same applies to the energy storage device: the all-solid-state battery in the BMW i Vision Circular is 100 per cent recyclable and made almost entirely using materials sourced from the recycling loop. It will achieve much higher energy density with reduced use of the most valuable resources.
BMW has said before that it aims to achieve climate neutrality. One way is to reduce CO2 emissions throughout a vehicle’s life cycle.
Besides electrifying the product portfolio and switching to renewable energy for manufacturing, the company is focusing on circular economy principles and the use of secondary materials.
These materials, such as secondary aluminium and secondary steel, can be obtained by recycling waste material and then reused. The process for supplying secondary materials is less harmful to the environment and carbon intensive compared to the extraction and manufacture of primary material.
This can improve a vehicle’s carbon footprint, especially on the supply chain side. At present, vehicles from the BMW Group are made using nearly 30 per cent recycled and reused material on average. It plans to raise it to 50%.
