Automotive roadmap outlines steps for future mobility solutions

 

 

Developed by the American Chemistry Council (ACC, Washington, D.C., U.S.), an updated automotive roadmap released on March 3 aims to help automakers and their suppliers invent mobility solutions that can meet future personal mobility demands.

The new roadmap, “Automotive Plastics and Polymer Composites: A Roadmap for Future Mobility,” calls for a series of industry-wide, collaborative activities to capture opportunities in each area of the ACCESS framework — Autonomy, Connectivity, Circularity, Electrification, Shared Mobility and Sustainability. According to the ACC, these cooperative efforts will help automakers unleash the full potential of advanced plastics and composites essential to enabling future mobility needs.

“The future of personal mobility is not possible without plastics and polymer composites,” says Gina Oliver, senior director of ACC’s Automotive Team, which developed the roadmap.

For example, ACC reports that composites and plastics have the flexibility to enable sensors, electronics and batteries to be integrated safely and seamlessly into vehicles without adding extra weight. In addition, lightweight plastics are essential to increasing fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and can help offset added weight from additional features — in fact, ACC says that using composites for mixed-material designs could reduce the weight of some automotive components by 50-75%.

To develop the roadmap, ACC’s Plastics Division worked closely with the automotive industry and research community. The roadmap intends to reflect the transformative technological, cultural and economic megatrends that are converging to shape personal mobility. It also identifies the industry’s commitment to capturing the opportunities involved in achieving a more circular economy, through efforts such as recovering materials at the end of their usable life, refurbishing and repairing materials to extend product lifecycles, and remanufacturing and reusing them in new products.

“Automotive plastics and polymer composites providers are excited to tackle the activities outlined in this roadmap,” said Oliver. “We look forward to working with automotive OEMs and suppliers, academic and national laboratory researchers, and government agencies to realize more affordable, accessible, sustainable, and environmentally responsible mobility solutions for all.”

View the new roadmap online: Automotive Plastics and Polymer Composites: A Roadmap for Future Mobility.