At DVN, we deliberately keep ourselves keenly aware of sustainability and its challenges. Reducing the carbon footprint of the vehicle lighting industry is front-and-centre as it becomes increasingly apparent that we will have to tread much more lightly if this, our one and only planet, is to remain inhabitable. But that—enormous though it be—is not the only reason why sustainability is crucial. It’s not just about the potential unavailability of petrol in the future, or trying to apply the brakes to increasingly-evident climate change. Geopolitics lately are trending toward instability and isolationism. If Europe, for example, wants to guarantee autonomy and avoid geopolitical tension, then re-use, recycling, and repairability are urgently mandatory, not just nice to think about doing. Same goes for Canada, Australia, Japan, China, the United States…whatever country we might name.
This trend has come to consumer industries with more and more second-hand shops. Not only for ecological purposes, but also just because second-hand goods are less expensive—and another current trend is inflation pretty much everywhere, making everything more expensive. That’s another driver of the hotting-up interest in repairability, reusability, and durability of goods. Our industry is being carried along in this river; the new European requirement about circular economy including end of life vehicle stands to significantly change a lot about how we develop vehicles and components (see the document here). For example, all PCBs bigger than 10 cm2 should be configured and constructed to facilitate removal of LEDs and components for reuse, repair, or recycling. That’s a giant change from years and decades of “Broken, dead, end of life? Throw it away!”.
This week’s DVNewsletter is the third dedicated to sustainability and circularity. In July 2024 we talked about the circular-economy tech summit and Valeo’s presentation about lighting, and in January we presented the GM-Llink initiative to remanufacture headlamps.
Sustainability is a great big domain. It involves the whole of the supply chain—raw material suppliers, logistics, component and vehicle manufacturing, energy sources, delivery to the end user—and that’s just for the production phase. Then there’s the use phase (for lighting, it represents around 80-90 per cent of the CO2 footprint depending how efficient are optical systems, as shown by Volvo Cars at the DVN Munich event. And after that, at the end of the service life of the vehicle component, or whatever else, comes the post phase: collection, recycling (or refurbishing, rebuilding, reusing, remanufacturing) and finally, much-reduced residual waste.
Automaker and tier-1 R&D efforts are at the forefront to tackle this tall stack of challenges. Design and engineering must build sustainability into the product from the start—low power consumption, durability/long service life, easy repairability, easy post-use handling. If not, the manufacturing process, logistics, and recycling chain will be uncompetitive, and it will never work. We have seen some promising initiatives recently, and we actively promote them during DVN events. To that end, the DVN team and I have built a very promising session with 14 lectures from automakers, tier-1 and -2 suppliers, service companies, and research institutes. This diverse group will present their ideas and propose solutions. Some of them are already implemented and will be described in real-time terms.
I had a long talk with Mino Yamamoto, Valeo’s circular economy director, who will be one of the keynote speakers at the event. She will explain Valeo’s work in circular economy; what they have already done and what they’re working on for the future. Take a look at the interview with Yamamoto in this week’s DVNewsletter.
We also bring you Hans Joaquim Schwabe’s detailed report of his visit to ams Osram’s XLS plant in Ulm, Germany. This solution, introduced some years ago in accord with technical specifications in UN R128, makes it easy to create LED vehicle lights that are readily repairable, rebuildable, and recyclable. There’ll be an update on this terrific technology at the DVN event.
You’ll also read about my visit to Volvo Trucks in Gothenburg. This was the first time for me to visit a truck maker and sit in a truck to do an ADB night drive. I was not actually aware that ADB is available on trucks. It’s a really fantastic feature to support truck drivers’ safety and comfort during long night drives. What is also unique for truck lamps is the long lifetime requirements and harsher service conditions compared to cars. Trucks are used 24 hours per day, 365 days per years. Stepper motors, fans, and LEDs cannot necessarily last through the long, difficult service life of a heavy-duty vehicle, and so must be replaceable. The Volvo lamps are accordingly designed for easy repair, and once they’re finally all done, they’re easy to recycle. Car makers can learn quite a lot from truck makers, as it seems. Here again: don’t miss Volvo Trucks’ presentation at DVN Munich, and their lamp at the ZKW booth.
This is also the first time we will dedicate a session to 2-wheelers, truck lamps, and premium and sports cars. There’s much more to the vehicle lighting community than just lights for passenger cars, and after a tentative last year, I succeed to make it happen this year. I hope you will enjoy this newly enriched content at the Munich event!
Speaking of which: don’t forget to cast your votes for the 2024 DVN Awards! We close the vote tonight at midnight, European time.
Sincerely yours,
