The BMW Group Looks to Reduce CO2 for Full Vehicle Lifecycle

(Photo: The BMW Group is increasing electric vehicle production to lower CO2 emissions, and reported working on a sustainable material cycle for battery cells. Credit: The BMW Group)

The BMW Group released strategies this week for how the company plans to reach key sustainability goals by 2030. New measures include setting targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions for a vehicle’s entire lifecycle.

Oliver Zipse, BMW Group’s chairman of the board of management, said that the company — known for BMW, Mini, and Rolls-Royce vehicles — is making fighting climate change central to their future. He explained that all divisions would be involved, from administration and purchasing to development and production through to sales.

They are looking at vehicle emissions from the supply chain all the way to end-of-use for the first time. By 2030, the goal is to significantly reduce CO2 emissions per vehicle by at least one third across the entire spectrum, according to the company.

“For a fleet of around 2.5 million vehicles, as produced by the BMW Group in 2019, this would correspond to a reduction of more than 40 million metric tons of CO2 over the lifecycle in 2030,” the automaker noted.

In addition, the company plans to:

• Report annually on progress against a detailed 10-year plan that has interim goals.
• Tie board and executive management compensation to progress made against these sustainability targets.
• Lower CO2 from production and sites by 80%.
• Source 100% “green” power as of this year.
• Invest in optimizing energy efficiency.
• Make production more efficient and minimize scrapped parts by applying methods like data analytics.
• Fully offset remaining Scope 1 and 2 emissions from 2021 onward with certificates.
• Increase the amount of secondary material in vehicles.

Focus on Electric Vehicle Production

By the end of 2021, the BMW Group says it intends to offer five fully-electric production vehicles: the BMW i3, the Mini Cooper SE, the BMW iX3, the BMW iNext, and the BMW i4.

“The BMW brand flagship will be available with four different drive technologies: with a highly efficient diesel or petrol engine with 48-volt technology, as an electrified plug-in hybrid and, for the first time, as a fully-electric BEV model,” the company said. They aim to have 25 electrified models on the road by 2023, with half of them fully electric.

In addition, the group formed a partnership with German lithium-ion battery recycling company Duesenfeld to come up with a way to achieve a recycling rate as high as 96% for high-voltage batteries, including graphite and electrolytes.

On Thursday, the automaker announced that it would begin building a new pilot plant in Parsdorf, near Munich, to develop a sustainable material cycle for battery cells.