JLR working on project REALITY to recycle aluminium

JLR's REALITY project aims to recover aluminium from used vehicles and reform it into high-grade aluminium, which will then be used to create new vehicles.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced that it is working on a recycling initiative under what is called the 'REALITY Project'. The project comes as a part of JLR's next phase of aluminium closed-loop strategy. Currently, the process is being tested on some pre-production Jaguar I-PACE prototypes that have had their batteries safely removed. While the batteries undergo their own second-life process, the leftover scrap is sorted to obtain the aluminium bits, which are then recycled. The project has been co-funded by Innovate UK.

Owing to this initiative's successful run, between September 2013 and January 2019, JLR has been able to process around 3,00,000 tonnes of closed-loop scrap back into high-grade aluminium, which has been used in the production of its entire line-up since. JLR claims that by the time the REALITY Project comes into full swing, it will further bring down the company's global vehicle manufacturing CO2 emissions, which have already been brought down by nearly 46 per cent per vehicle.

In 2014, the Jaguar XE became the first vehicle in the world to use aluminium alloy grade RC5754 for its body panels, which contains up to 75 per cent recycled aluminium. JLR is also simultaneously working to bring large fleets of shared vehicles under the ambit of the REALITY Project.