This isn’t a good sign.
With the government-induced shutdowns all over the globe in response to the spread of covid, pretty much no aspect of life wasn’t negatively impacted. That unfortunately includes vehicle production, with supply chain shortages still plaguing the industry and projections the crisis will continue into 2024. To better manage the situation, auto giant Stellantis, which owns brands like Ram, Dodge, and Jeep, has decided to start recycling parts.
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To take on this bold mission, Stellantis created a new division for its “circular economy” initiative. It’s key to the net-zero carbon goal set for 2038, one of the latest in-fashion things for large corporations to declare. Creating this new division alsofalls under a “Dare Forward” business plan revealed by the automaker back in March.
Stellantis believes recycling automotive parts will be big business by 2030. By the automaker’s estimates, it should generate $1.9 billion in annual revenue by then, 10 times what Stellantis made through recycling efforts last year.
What sounds great about this plan is customers potentially would be paying far less to buy recycled parts versus new options. With cars and their components constantly getting more expensive, who wouldn’t want that?
On top of the financial benefit, Stellantis believes this will mean delivering parts sooner. Just about everyone has waited too long for a car part to show up, forced to drive a rental or some other nonsense in the meantime.
However, quality of the parts is always going to be a concern. This is especially true when it comes to EV batteries, one of the big components Stellantis wants to recycle. Will they last as long as new batteries? Will they store as much electricity so range isn’t negatively affected? And just how much cheaper will they be? Consumers will have plenty of questions and we suspect most will be skittish about this option, at least at first.
While Stellantis appears to be an early leader in this movement, we can almost guarantee other automakers are already working on similar plans. After all, parts shortages have led to production crunches in the past two years, something which has backed automakers into a bit of a corner.
Source: The Detroit News
Images via Stellantis
