Sustainability comes to seatbelt covers – from Audi
Audi, the brand with the four rings, is constantly researching new innovative and sustainable solutions to implement in its vehicles in order to achieve the desired carbon neutrality and its 2030 target to focus on electrification. Based on these goals, Audi has unveiled an interesting new solution.
These are new recycled seat belt covers. In more detail, they are plastic seat belt buckle covers made from automotive plastic waste through a chemical recycling process. These new seat belts will be implemented in the recently launched Audi Q8 e-tron. The company comments:
“This is the first time the company has installed safety components manufactured in this way and, together with the PlasticLoop project, has established an innovative process with plastics manufacturer LyondellBasell, based on the results of a pilot project.”
Plastic components that cannot be repaired are first dismantled from customers’ vehicles and freed of foreign materials before being broken down into smaller parts and transformed into pyrolysis oil by chemical recycling. This is a process investigated in the ongoing project to recycle plastics for use in series production.
The resulting oil is reused as a raw material for the manufacture of new plastics. These materials have the same quality level as newly produced plastics and offer identical technical characteristics. Audi intends to provide enough pyrolysis oil for the entire production of the Q8 e-tron on the basis of currently planned production.
As mentioned at the beginning, Audi is researching several solutions related to sustainability, such as the particulate filter for electric vehicles ‘Audi Urban Purifier’, the development of a technology to filter CO2 emissions or the recycling programme for household batteries launched together with Redwood, among others.
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