BMW-led Car2Car project raises car-to-car recycling rate from 6% to 51%

BMW Group and its partners in the Car2Car research project have shown that high-quality material loops are technically feasible on an industrial scale. With expanded processing and sorting, the 'Car2Car rate' — the share of materials from an end-of-life vehicle recoverable at sufficient quality for reuse — rose from six to 51 percent across five focus material groups. The project highlighted especially high recovery potential for steel, aluminium and copper, while plastics and glass still present significant challenges.

These gains come from adding processing and sorting steps: improved pre-sorting, modified shredding, classification, sensor-based sorting of material streams, and more precise separation of aluminium alloys. Using standard market methods with minimal compulsory dismantling, the project reached just six percent; advanced process engineering lifted it to 51 percent. The steel example shows how it works: sorting steel scrap reduced copper contamination from cables and connectors, producing high-quality scrap for new flat steel, with a patent application filed.

Steel proved the project's key example. An additional sorting step reduced copper-bearing impurities in end-of-life vehicle scrap, yielding high-quality steel scrap that was turned into flat steel meeting modern automotive requirements, and a patent application was filed for the process. In the field test at BMW Group Plant Leipzig, more than 100,000 series parts were produced and installed in vehicles, demonstrating along a real industrial value chain that new components can be made from scrapped cars. The field test covered 433 end-of-life vehicles from 60 different BMW Group models, including test vehicles less than five years old.

Plastics and glass lag behind metals: complex composite structures and stringent quality requirements make high-quality recyclates difficult, so precisely tailored process chains are needed. The results feed into BMW Group's Design for Circularity approach and cooperation with recycling partner PreZero. The consortium, spanning automotive, materials manufacturing, recycling and academia, included BMW AG, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology, Technical University of Munich, Scholz Recycling, STEINERT UniSort, thyssenkrupp Steel Europe, Salzgitter Mannesmann Forschung, Aurubis, Novelis Germany, OETINGER Aluminium and Pilkington Automotive Germany. In the context of the European ELV Regulation, Car2Car provides a data basis for the entire recycling landscape, though scaling up requires investment and viable business models.