So that is not electric. Not hybrid, just conventional internal combustion.
Yeah. Yeah, it’s conventional.
What is the one the adjective that come comes to mind when you think about electronics in a car?
Sorry. What? Electronics? Yeah.
What comes to mind? The adjective.
The objective? Oh. Adjective. Oh, sorry. Adjective.
Yeah. Um. Uh.
Sustainability, I guess. Something like that. Yeah.
Easy. Complicated. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, in your opinion, are cars that include electronic components easier or harder to adapt to circular economy practice than regular cars?
At the moment? Probably less, because as far as I can tell, people are only really interested in recovering the powertrain, the battery. There doesn’t seem to be much of an industry around the other 60%. And in fact, there’s quite a there’s quite a sophisticated market for recovering internal combustion engine parts. Maybe lower down the hierarchy. But, you know, so so no, I don’t think I don’t think they are ready for it. Yeah.
Let us come back to the automotive industry. Do you think that how can the automotive industry promote a circular economy?
How do they promote it? Well enough. They try to. I mean, how can they introduce it? I think they have to design their cars more smartly for recycling and for recovery and for reuse. There is I don’t see any I don’t see any great effort to do that. And, you know, for example, with electric vehicles, how do you get the battery out of it? How do you get into the battery? They’re all really locked in. And recyclers say that they struggle to open them up to check the fuel cells and everything else. So first of all, then probably the single biggest thing would be to design their cars better. I think they should have a much closer relationship with the value chain that for for secondary use, the recyclers and the and the dismantlers could be much more closely. I’m not saying they should be all owned by the by the manufacturers, but a much more closer integrated approach so that they understand what it’s like to deal with their cars when they become end of life.
Do you have concerns about privacy and personal data stored by car electronics when they should be reused like GPS or so?
No. No. Because I can understand what people may be. I understand general concerns about personal data, but I think we should be smart enough to make a system that says we will protect data because we need the data. So so no, I mean, I’m personally not bothered about it. And I think that as long as the system protects data like it does with everybody else, the data we need out of it is way more important.
Do recycling and reusing mean different things to you?
Yeah
Could you explain, please?
Reuse is taking a bottle and using the same bottle and filling it up with milk again or whatever. Recycling is taking that bottle, smashing it up. It’s putting a lot of time, effort and money and energy into making a new bottle. So that’s I think that probably explains it.
On a scale of 1 to 5, one means not at all concerned and five means extremely concerned. How concerned are you about issues of environmental waste and pollution.
In cars or in across the board? Five. Because, in particular, if you think of plastics, it’s the same for a lot but for plastics, for example. I mean the increase in the use of plastics over the next 25 years is going to be far in excess of the increase in the amount of plastics we’re recovering. So that in itself says we’ll be failing, we fail before we start. So that’s a concern.