Tailpipe emissions make the biggest greenhouse gas contribution of personal transportation, which is why the switch to EVs is so important. But the CO2 generated during production typically also accounts for 20-23% of lifecycle emissions of an internal combustion engine (ICE) car, and 30-46% for battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Reducing the impact of production can have real environmental benefits. This is why Jaguar Land Rover (JLR)’s new Project Cornerstone could be a very important step for the company’s brands, including luxury marque Range Rover. I talked to JLR’s Director, Sustainable Industrial Operations, Reuben Chorley, at the launch about how the project could have major implications beyond sustainability, too.
What Is The Project Cornerstone Range Rover?
Project Cornerstone centers around a Range Rover demonstration car that JLR has built from an unused shell, integrating sustainably sourced parts to show the quality that is possible while significantly reducing environmental impact. “We started the project just over a year ago,” says Chorley. “The idea behind it was that we were thinking should we do a concept that shows what we think will be possible in the future with sustainability, or should we do something slightly different? We chose to work with our 30 biggest suppliers who produce components that have the highest carbon within them, so things like steel, aluminum, and alloy wheels. We challenged them to produce the most sustainable product that they could today for a proof of concept.”
Instead of producing something hypothetical, JLR wanted suppliers to deliver practical products that could scale into future vehicles. “We can then see if they can get through testing and validation,” says Chorley. JLR didn’t tell its suppliers what to do but wanted to collaborate on producing the most sustainable products. So far, this has resulted in 49 updated components amounting to 140kg of weight on the demonstration car, delivering more than a ton of CO2 equivalent production savings compared to conventional manufacturing approaches. When you consider that building a typical ICE car generates between 5.5 and 8 tons of CO2 equivalent, and a BEV 8 to 12 tons, this is a significant reduction.
“The highest impact from a carbon point of view was the alloy wheels,” says Chorley. “The new sustainable ones come with very high recycled content, also produced with 100% renewable energy.” Then there are headlights created from recycled content including tire material, recycled seat foam, FlexAir seating technology, and side window glass produced with 100% recycled automotive glass (from replaced windscreens) by Pilkington. The latter delivers a 36% reduction in associated CO2 emissions. Then there are speaker magnets using 95% recycled materials.
Suppliers have been working together, too. “When Superior Industries made the alloy wheels, they talked with Pirelli, who are doing the tires, to discuss a shared narrative,” says Chorley. JLR doesn’t own any of these material designs, although this might change with some joint work in the future. “With sustainability, we’re not competing in the same way as we do on other attributes like cost. If we want the vehicles to be increasingly sustainable, with lower carbon and recycled content, then the more of the industry that does that, the better it is for us as well. We don’t want it to just be JLR. We want the whole industry to get better.”
Securing Range Rover Supply Chains
However, there’s another motive aside from sustainability behind JLR’s push towards recycling and circularity: supply chain resilience. In a geopolitical environment where spread-out global supply lines are regularly interrupted, and some key materials are monopolized by certain countries (such as speaker magnets), a local source of recycled alternatives provides security. “If there is scarcity of a particular grade or material and we can get that from end-of-life vehicles back into the supply chain to new vehicles through a closed loop, then that means we’ve got greater resilience for our own production,” says Chorley. He also cites compliance as a continuing constraint, where countries legislate a minimum quantity of recycled content for certain materials. If one major market imposes such rules, it makes sense to comply with vehicles destined for all countries to simplify production. “We wouldn’t want to have different tooling for different markets, because we don’t sell enough vehicles to justify that.”
One of the key things JLR is at pains to underline with the Project Cornerstone Range demonstration vehicle is how the recycled parts are indistinguishable from those made with virgin new material. Of the two front light assemblies on the Range Rover, only one used recycled material, and it was impossible to tell them apart. “We want the car to be a product that still delights the customer,” says Chorley. “This could be the car that they dreamt of owning for some time, and we’re not changing it in any way to make it more sustainable. It’s still just the same car. If you care about it, you’ll know. If you’re not interested, and you’re just looking at the headlamps, you’re just thinking they’re working wonderfully. The customer has a choice about how much they want to know of that story. We’re trying to provide the best stories that we can for those customers as well.”
Recycled material has a reputation for being more expensive than that made from virgin material, but JLR has found this a very variable area. “That’s part of what we’re looking at with industrialization,” says Chorley. “It depends on the product, the maturity, and the source. Some recycled materials are on par, some are cheaper with virgin, others more expensive, and every single scenario is different. Over the next five to 10 years, that’s all going to mature and change as the industry develops, because companies are starting to realize now that vehicles at end of life are worth more than they used to be five years ago. If you can separate the materials to get them ready for reuse in a new component to replace virgin, then there’s a greater value than what an end-of-life vehicle had before. There are new industries forming around end-of-life vehicles as well as new technologies to be deployed to replace certain materials. The industry is changing hugely, and over the next five to 10 years that will continue at pace.”
When Will Project Cornerstone Reach A Range Rover Near You?
“At the beginning, we weren’t sure how many suppliers would get involved in this, or how successful it would be,” says Chorley. “But we found our suppliers were far more enthused even than we’d hoped, which was phenomenal. Making sure we keep up with that by enabling what they need and answering the questions they have has been more challenging. But that’s a positive challenge, because it’s been more successful than we thought it could be.”
The key difference between Project Cornerstone and theoretical proofs of concept, like BMW’s iVision Circular (although BMW has subsequently integrated sustainability enhancements into production Neue Klasse vehicles like the iX3), is the focus on practical end results. However, that doesn’t mean you will be seeing JLR cars with Project Cornerstone components tomorrow. “Everything still needs to go through validation tests,” says Chorley. “The 100% recycled door glass is tested, validated, and will be on a future vehicle. We’ll be announcing that we’ve got several other things going through as well, like seat foams, and they will be deployed at the right time, depending on vehicle launches. We’re also going to continue to develop, so we want to keep working with not only the 30 suppliers we have worked with, but we’ve now opened this up to a further 150 suppliers to say what else we can get working on.”
“We’ll start to see an acceleration of ideas about what could be matured, and there’s an element of competition as well,” adds Chorley. “People would like to get something into a future vehicle, so that we can get it into the customer’s garage. The motto we use is just making things real. We’re taking real components and real industrial proof of concepts to formalize what can be done. We then work with suppliers to discover how easy that is to industrialize, and what does that mean.” JLR also wants to assess the durability of the sustainable components, gauging particularly how surface material wears and responds to sunlight, as well as likely customer reaction. “Those are all things we need to go through to make sure that what we’re doing is not going to affect in any negative way the experience of our customers.”
JLR even sees Project Cornerstone potentially delivering a competitive advantage for the company in these turbulent times for automotive production. “Circularity as a concept is an area we’re starting to focus on a lot more within JLR,” says Chorley. “We need to understand more about what it really means, but working more in this space is something we want to do going forward. Based on the results of this, let’s see how much we can get into vehicles.” Watch this space, but it might not be long before your next Range Rover is packed with recycled material, and you won’t even realize.
