The main focus of BMW at this year’s IAA Mobility show was, without a doubt, on sustainability. The Munich-based manufacturer wanted to show that just making an electric car is not enough. Sure, we get rid of the toxic fumes coming out of the tailpipes but we need to do more. One of the more important ways in which manufacturers can help the environment is by creating recyclable cars and that’s exactly what the BMW i Vision Circular concept is.
Unveiled at the Munich show, the new concept from the Bavarian brand is meant to show just what can be done in this regard. The car itself (if you can still call it a car) is 100% recyclable and that doesn’t mean it just uses a certain kind of material. As the video below explains, in order to be able to recycle a car you first need to make sure it is built in a certain way, to allow materials to be separated and recuperated.
That means a whole new way of designing and building cars is necessary so that at the end of a car’s life cycle it doesn’t actually end up hurting the planet even more. Recycling is all nice and good but you can’t simply reuse materials in an endless loop. Some loss will take place. To address that issue, car makers also need to make sure that the cars they make use as little resources as possible. And, if they do need certain parts, they are made of secondary materials anyway.
All these efforts are combined in BMW’s new RE:Think strategy that proposes a new way of looking at the development and manufacturing process for cars. The BMW i Vision Circular is the first car to exemplify what they are actually trying to achieve. Remember, this is not a vehicle that’s meant to enter production so don’t pay too much attention to the design.
This is meant to be a way of showing what is possible and how things should be done so that the automotive industry doesn’t hurt the environment more than it already does.
