Material composition trends in vehicles: critical raw materials and other relevant metals. Preparing a dataset on secondary raw materials for the Raw Materials Information System

Report, 2021

Previous research efforts have focused on the development of comprehensive and robust datasets on Secondary Raw Materials, as requested in particular in the EU Circular Economy Action Plan (2015). For example, the Horizon 2020 project ProSUM (Prospecting Secondary raw materials in the Urban mine and Mining wastes, 2015-2017) resulted in the creation of the Urban Mine Platform (UMP)1. The UMP displays comprehensive data from the RMIS on the European stocks and flows of batteries, electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and vehicles, as well as the materials, components and chemical elements contained in these stocks and flows. The battery dataset has been updated in 2019 in the Raw Materials Information System (RMIS).
This report presents the approach, the background data and the key results of the update of the UMP data concerning vehicle composition. It discusses in particular the improvement of existing data using recent information and knowledge that has become available since the realisation of ProSUM, and the extension of time series until the year 2023 through extrapolation. New components were also added to the existing dataset. The considered materials in the dataset are: cast and wrought aluminium, mild and high strength steel, cast iron and magnesium alloys. The considered components are: catalytic converter, electrics and electronics, power electronics, battery management systems, induction and permanent magnets electric drive motors. The average mass of each of those materials and components is estimated in vehicles, categorized by vehicle type, fuel type, engine size and mass class, for each year between until 2023. Moreover, the average mass fractions of 16 elements (Ag, Al, Au, Cu, Dy, Fe, La, Mg, Mn, Mo, Nb, Nd, Pd, Pt, Rh, Si) in the materials and components are estimated. This composition data, when combined with data on the fleet of vehicles in the EU, is the basis for datasets on secondary raw materials in vehicles, to be soon featured in an interactive data viewer in the RMIS. The vehicle dataset will not address battery active materials and will have therefore to be looked at in combination with the battery datasets already available on the RMIS.
Such updated dataset can be extremely useful to support EU policies, since vehicles and mobility are key products and sectors in the transition towards a low carbon and circular economy.