Collaborative R&D Competitions

JLR: SCALE-UP, Sustainable Composite for Automotive and Low-Emission UK Production

Addressing the challenge of high-volume sustainable lightweighting in battery-electric vehicles by delivering lower CO2, high-volume manufacturing, production scale-up and digital tools.  

JLR will lead fellow industrial and academic partners in developing a growing UK supply chain, enabling the high-volume application of lightweight and circular composite technologies in the automotive industry. 

Sustainable mobility is key for a net-zero future and battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) play a key role in this transition. However, BEV’s are traditionally heavier than Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) which represents an engineering challenge. Using composites, specifically carbon-fibre composite, can help deliver weight-saving solutions compared to metals, but usually has a higher carbon footprint (CO2e). Although credible lightweight and sustainable composite material alternatives exist today, these are only available in limited volume. 

Key highlights   

  • Developing a lighter, sustainable/lower-CO2e, affordable door, which could be an alternative to aluminium. This is in anticipation of future legislation and decarbonisation of aluminium. 
  • Designing a high-volume, affordable, sustainable carbon fibre wheel which pioneers state-of-art production volume through deployment of innovative design and manufacturing processes. 
  • Production scale-up of high-performance recycled carbon fibre materials to allow mass production of recycled carbon fibre composite, retaining up to 90% of the original performance. 
  • Developing digital tools using new modelling methods predicting the feasibility, performance and quality of the final products. 
  • Total project value £6.3 million, £3.1 million funded by the Department for Business and Trade through the APC. 

 

Project consortium 

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