The Jaguar XE has been manufactured for a year now and in that time 50,000 tonnes of recycled aluminium has been used in its production.
This closed-loop aluminium recycling programme reclaims the equivalent of 200,000 XE body shells, which is the first vehicle in the world to incorporate this recycled grade of aluminium.
Under this REALCAR project, Jaguar Land Rover estimates that 500,000 tonnes of CO2 has been prevented by not using primary aluminium.
At 11 UK press shops, a closed-loop system has been introduced that segregates waste aluminium scrap so that it can be sent back into production to be re-melted into recycled aluminium sheet.
This Jaguar Land Rover-led research project has been part funded by Innovate UK, and also saw the development of an aluminium-based alloy that can accept a higher percentage of recovered scrap.
The Jaguar XE was the first car in the world to use this high-strength aluminium alloy developed by Novelis.
Jaguar Land Rover group engineering director Nick Rogers said: “Innovation is at the heart of everything we do at Jaguar Land Rover. We are driven by the desire to produce increasingly world-class, light-weight vehicles, but we also want to be world leading in how we build them.
“Innovative projects such as REALCAR demonstrate our commitment to meeting our sustainability challenges head-on. Its success so far marks a significant step towards our goal of having up to 75% recycled aluminium content in our vehicle structures by 2020.”
The structural grade of recycled aluminium has since been tested and introduced in the lightweight aluminium bodies of the new Jaguar XF and F-Pace models.
