Jaguar Land Rover is developing an innovative new scheme which will cut down the company’s use of aluminium.
Named Jaguar’s ‘closed loop strategy’ the REALITY project will take aluminium from existing Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles and reform it into a new high-grade aluminium to create new vehicles.
The project is being part-funded by Innovate UK and early trials will see the recovered aluminium used on pre-production I-PACE prototypes. The recycled aluminium will be tested by scientists at Brunel University, with the material’s strength and purity needing to meet certain standards before being passed fit to go into body panels across the Jaguar and Land Rover ranges.
“More than a million cars are crushed every year in the UK and this pioneering project affords us a real opportunity to give some of them a second life,” said Gaëlle Guillaume, Lead Project Manager for the Reality Project at Jaguar Land Rover.
“Aluminium is a valuable material and a key component in our manufacturing process and as such we’re committed to ensuring our use of it is as responsible as possible.”
The recovery of aluminium will continue Jaguar Land Rover’s commitment to to reprocessing the scrap from their vehicles, with already 300,000 tonnes of scrap already recycled by the company since September 2013.