The car industry needs to move quicker to avert climate catastrophe

But the more pressing matter, surely, is how to make much more of a car’s interior out of sustainable, recyclable and re-used materials than is currently happening. 

A quick flick through press releases sent by car brands over the past couple of years shows what in future years will look like a pitiable first response to the encroaching environmental crisis. Brands trumpet seats made of “18 per cent recycled marine plastics”, or car interiors that are comprised of “up to 30 per cent” recycled materials. There are celebrated factory energy savings of “13.9 per cent”. Every energy-saving or recycled-material step is a good one, especially given the high volumes in these cases, but how much more could these companies actually be doing, and how much faster? Does our glad acceptance of their stats actually let them off the hook for thinking and reaching bigger and higher? Are they under enough pressure, from consumers, the media and regulatory bodies?

We’re starting to see brands build manufacturing chains comprised of 100 per cent recycled and reused materials, which makes the above stats not only look paltry, but actually do the inverse job – instead of hearing the good news about 13.9 per cent energy savings at factories, we’re starting to think about the 86.1 per cent still to go, which only serves to highlight the scale of the problem.

Two current projects show where more brands could be at, if saving the planet really was at the heart of their business strategy (and that may sound like a hyperbolic ideal but global economists are starting to demand a new definition of economics, based not on profitability or capitalism, but on socio-environmental goals).

First is the Citroën Oli concept, mentioned here before: a beautiful, desirable form of urban transport which is made out of 100 per cent recycled materials and has reusable body parts. The other is the Polestar 0 project, a car which Polestar says it will build by 2030, and which will have no carbon footprint at any stage of its manufacturing journey. Listen to Hans Pehrson, the project’s boss, talk passionately about the need to work to a target of zero carbon emissions, not a reduction in emissions, and you cannot help but be convinced that our focus on reduction, on percentages and stats, is potentially harming the only game in town: zero emissions, as urgently as possible. 

And if you’re still in any doubt, or disagree, you have only to look at the Pathway Report issued by Polestar and Rivian last month, which estimates that not only will we not meet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 1.5-degree limit, but we will overshoot it by 75 per cent by 2050 if we carry on in this vein. The passenger car industry is responsible for 15 per cent of global emissions. Pathway concludes that we will have spent our total and final carbon budget by 2035. In other words, after 2035, if we carry on on our current trajectory, not one iota of carbon can be emitted by any point of the cradle-to-grave life cycle of a car. Which OEM, with the possible exception of Polestar, (but one project does not equal a mass-volume production line’s worth of cars) is anywhere near on track to be able to deliver zero emissions (not net zero, but true zero)?

So we really have to move quicker, go deeper and travel farther than we are currently doing. Now is not the time to be resting on our laurels, congratulating ourselves for car seats made of 30 per cent recycled fishing nets.