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Ford Shows Off Recyclable Car
Opspin writes "MBDC (who wrote the book Cradle to Cradle) write in their
January Newsletter about a Ford Concept Car that includes Bluetooth technology as well as Cradle-to-Cradle design strategies. Read the MBDC press release, and the Ford Motor Company press release."
I'd like to have the opportunity to throw away a Ford Focus. Sure it probably has all of the proper bullet points, but there are lots of very nice cars out there with the right price/feature ratio that actually have a _soul_!
I must say that it's a great concept, but my first impression is that the thing is really ugly. I wonder how many people rank the look of their vehicle in the list of priorities for buying. If they do, will the look of this one negatively affect its sales?
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Photos in Google's cache can be found here.
In all honesty, how many people do you think actually recycle? Fine, a new disposable environmentally friendly car is developed. But, last I checked, most recyclable items still ended up in trash and ultimately in land fills. I can't imagine what would happen if you could throw away a car that often
It doesn't help that the President now wants to provide tax incentives for certain types of SUV owners. Face it, beneath the green rhetoric, the US is a society that lives on pig iron and fossil fuels.
From the article:
- Corn-based roof canvas
- Bio-materials, including soy-based foam and tailgate, sunflower seed-based oil, corn tire filler
if you run out of other uses for it, you can eat it too!
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
For decades the automobile has been the most recycled consumer product. First a discarded automobile is stripped of its vauable parts. Ever attend a 'all-you-can-carry' day at an automotive salvage yard? A huge crowd of people disassembling autos for the parts they need. Doors, hoods, dashboards, engines, alternators, seats, anything....
Also note, that the majority of stolen cars are stolen for their parts.
After striping, depending on the car and its arrival condition it can be anything from a stripped shell to pretty much intact. At this point the car is crushed.
The crushed car is then put through a shredder, then through various processes the metals are separated and depending how advanced the facility, the plastics and other materials.
BTW, under consideration in europe for auto recycling has beena dismantling approach. Where the automaker takes the car back and actually diassembles it, rather than using a crusher and shreadder.
Even if one is displeased with the actual amount of automotive recycling, the fact remains, it is higher than other consumer products.
Don't forget that Ford really sucks.
Chris
It's about time they started making the things from carbon fibre (or even glass fibre), which is easily repaired, lightweight (therefore more fuel efficient), and totally immune to corrosion. The attitude that a car is a disposable commodity, to be tossed in the trash every couple of years is daft. I would rather see manufacturers offering upgrades to existing vehicle as an alternative.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
This is a concept intended as "proof of concept", and not for production.
If it were intended for production, there would be a lot more refinement of processes, materials, and even design elements involved, and a lot more details fothcoming about such elements. If it were intended for production, there would at least be focus groups involved in such things as its marketability in its current form (such as it is). Not to mention lobbying for the infrastructure necessary to get a car like this produced and feasably useable (hydrogen-refill stations, for one).
Instead, this seeks to prove that something, in theory, COULD be done. Recyclable body panels are nothing new (Ford had an aluminum concept several years ago, and the new Jaguar X-type owes its many production delays toward the use of aluminum). Even subassemblies can be salvaged. And Hydrogen fuel cells have been in limited use and testing for over a decade.
What's interesting about this, is the use of new materials for fluids (arguably the most cancerous of all automotive components) and plastics. I'm not a chemist, but the testing of new corn and soy-based polymers for everything from interior materials to fluids is fascinating to me. At the very best, if pursued such processes could finally wean the US (and manufacturing in other sectors outside of the auto industry) off petroleum-based plastics and fluids, which would be a gigantic leap forward for industry, without question.
The "modular interior/ exterior" BS is all just marketing of design concepts. That's there to show that designs can lead themselves toward being more eco-friendly in a subtler fashion. Going back to the salvage industry: It's a lot easier to find salvage parts from platform-sharing cars Cougar/Thunderbird/MarkVII, Cavalier/Sunfire, Chrysler K-car, etc etc etc) than it is for one-offs. This concept I think seeks to carry over that mentality on a larger scale, tho with the public's demand for unique vehicles I doubt we'll ever see swappable parts on a grand scale.
It will be years if not decades before something like this can be driven off the lot, but it's good to know that the ideas are being tested. This concept should be good for new materials processing if nothing more. The only trick will be to keep Ford and other companies pursuing this, as opposed to saying "Great, we know it's possible, now go mothball that POS in a barn somewhere and let's forget it ever saw the light of day".
~~~
"The slave thinks he is released from bondage, only to find a stronger set of chains" - NIN
Excellent points all around. Your thinking argues for an entirely different strategy.
You want true automotive recycling? Pursue greater modularity and standard across automakers. Decrease black-boxiness of parts (make them mechanic repairable as they once were).
Of course these goals, as always, are probably at cross purposes with others.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
...about car manufacturers who boast about their cars being easily recycled instead of their cars being engineered to last a lifetime?
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Because of the European take-back regulations, BMW and other automakers have been designing their cars to be taken apart and recycled faster and easier for several years now.
Back in one of my environmental engineering classes, we saw a film on one of these take-back plants. It took a couple people just an hour or so to strip a BMW from all its recyclable parts, including stuff like draining (and saving) the fluids, pulling off all plastic parts, etc.
And BMW is always watching and feeding back into the design process. They've reduced the types of plastics used to have less bins and sorting involved. They've reduced the use of gluing, welding, and riveting of parts on and replaced with mechnical fasteners (screws, bolts), making it easier to take apart. Instead of a taillight assy having two types of plastic (lens, backshell) being glued or rivetted together, now its one type that may snap together.
German car fetishists may voice concern that stuff like this may reduce the quality or performance of their favorite vehicles, but to me that means they aren't as purist as they claim, they don't trust the same engineers that designed their favorite cars in the first place.