Car electronics is one of the most valuable sources of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) in cars. However, there is a remarkable lack of interest of carmakers (and the whole automotive value chain) towards its recovery from End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs). Especially at End-of-Life (EoL) phase, there are still many issues to be solved to functionally recover materials from cars (e.g. reuse recovered materials for the same purpose they were exploited originally) and the dependence from natural resources when producing new cars (even if electric/hybrid/fuel cell-powered) is still too high. This mandatory systemic transformation requires all companies/sectors to redefine products lifecycles since the beginning, by considering different CE approaches, and integrating design-for-disassembly and design-for-recycling approaches into the design phases. Considering together the wide number of barriers impacting on the automotive sector and the limited collaboration among actors involved in traditional automotive value chains, the transition towards CE cannot be reached so easily. From one side, Beginning-of-Life (BoL) and EoL stages are still unconnected from an information sharing perspective. This way, even if data on materials embedded in cars are known since many years, no one can exploit them. From another side, even if ELV management processes are active in Europe since the sixties, none of the actors involved in these processes is available to share their knowledge with carmakers or car part suppliers, given their unavailability to collaborate. So, both carmakers and car part suppliers cannot improve their design practices to make cars easier to disassemble and recycle. Here, TREASURE can offer a good chance for testing innovative technologies to make the automotive sector more circular. In particular, TREASURE has three main objectives:
1) The development of an AI-based scenario assessment tool supporting the development of circular supply chains in the automotive sector.
2) The representation of a set of success stories in three key value chains of the automotive industry (focusing on SMEs): 1) dismantlers/shredder; 2) recyclers and 3) manufacturers.
3) The integration of Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) for the efficient design of car electronics and subsequent disassembly and materials recovery.
4) The exploration of possible contributions to new standardization documents.
