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The Automobile Industry & Sustainability

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Impact Factor: 3.84 DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2006.05.035

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Journal of Cleaner Production 15 (2007) 989e993

www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Introduction

The Automobile Industry & Sustainability

Abstract
This paper summarises the contributions made to the special issue on The automobile Industry & Sustainability. Taking a life-cycle perspective, the contributions are allocated into the automotive life-cycle phases of design, manufacture (and supply chain management), use, and disposal or end of life vehicle management. The contributions are also set into the broader context of research into the global automotive industry,
and the economic, social and environmental pressures confronting the industry. In doing so, this introductory paper provides a brief assessment
of the ways in which the papers in the special issue have furthered our understanding of the difficulty in achieving a sustainable automotive
industry, and some of the measures that might be taken as progress towards that difficult goal.
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Automotive industry; Sustainability; Whole life-cycle perspective; Design; Manufacture; Use; End-of-life vehicles

1. Introduction
There are few industries as large, diverse and influential
as the automotive industry. Arguably, the largest single
manufacturing sector worldwide, the management practices,
organisational forms, and particularly the response to environmental pressures adopted by this industry are important in
their own right, but also in terms of influencing many other
business sectors. The products of this industry touch our daily
lives not only by providing personal mobility for millions, but
also by bringing a wide array of challenges. The deterioration
of local air quality in urban areas, along with global issues
such as global warming, and the treatment of scrapped vehicles are just a few examples of such challenges. As our introductory paper to this Special Issue argues (Orsato and Wells),
the resolution of environmental issues has to proceed alongside the many economic challenges currently facing the
automotive industry: notably over-capacity; saturated and
fragmenting markets; capital intensity; and persistent problems with achieving adequate profitability.
The papers collected for this Special Issue on The Automobile Industry & Sustainability reflect both the diversity of the
environmental challenges associated with the automotive industry, as well as the diversity of academic treatments of multiple subjects. As editors of the special issue, we felt it was
important to reflect differing theoretical and empirical perspectives, to capture the essence of where the research frontier
0959-6526/$ - see front matter 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2006.05.035

was with respect to the industry, without being overly prescriptive or imposing a particular theoretical focus. At the same
time, it was, of course, necessary to filter proposals both for
quality and innovation, and for a broad fit within the theme
of treating the business and technology aspects of sustainability
as they apply to the automotive industry. Equally, it seemed
important to capture the views from scholars in a variety of
geographic locations. The result is a special issue that could
be characterised as multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural and
multi-national.
Academia is usually organised into schools of thought,
within which there may be various theories and methodologies
that supposedly constitute meaningful intellectual endeavour.
In this respect, the focus on an industrial sector is unusual
(though previous special issues of Journal of Cleaner Production have also sought to focus on sectors), but increasingly
relevant. Our claim for such relevance arises out of the characteristic of discourses on sustainability, where the call for multidisciplinary analysis is strongest. As this special issue seeks to
demonstrate, what is required is a multiplicity of solutions and
understandings to be brought to bear against the fundamental
issue: how do we achieve a sustainable automobile industry
and how will that contribute to helping our societies become
more sustainable?
The papers are mostly a reflection of an underlying perspective: that sustainable mobility (whatever that may be) cannot be delivered by an industry or productioneconsumption

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Introduction / Journal of Cleaner Production 15 (2007) 989e993

system that is itself unsustainable. For all this talk of diversity,

however, it is incumbent upon the editors to arrange the papers
in a logical manner, and to explain the conceptual foundations
upon which the choice and coverage of the papers rest. The remaining sections of this introductory chapter seek to provide
that explanation.
2. Sustainability in an industry: a whole
system and life-cycle perspective
The insights offered by organisational theory have directed
attention to the organisational field within which businesses
operate, and in particular to the ways in which the constituents
of that organisational field circumscribe, allow, or variously
mediate change within the corporation [1,2]. Put simply, context is relevant. It matters in terms of both time and place. A
company does not exist in a vacuum, but as part of a set of
relationships that it both influences and is influenced by. Our
understanding of a sustainable car industry and sustainable
mobility is similarly grounded. Hence, the broader organisational field that can shape corporate responses to the pressures
of sustainability in the automotive industry may arise from
overt regulation by government or more subtly through
socio-technical experiments and normative visioning, as in
the account by Vergragt and Brown in a case study from
Boston, MA in USA. More obviously, the organisational field
has been substantially changed by the introduction of End of
Life Vehicle regulations in Europe, as several papers in this
special issue underscore.
Large vehicle manufacturers are inevitably powerful forces
in the creation of their own organisational field, with influences on many other businesses. Most obviously of course
this arises in respect of the suppliers of materials and components that can constitute up to 80% of the value of a finished
vehicle. As such, vehicle manufacturers have some of the largest and most professional purchasing departments and systems
in the world, being particularly adept at securing cost reductions from their suppliers. It is relevant to know what happens
when this power is applied to environmental or other sustainability goals, as demonstrated by the article of Zhu, Sarkis and
Lai with respect to green supply chain management practices
and performance in the Chinese automotive industry.
In parallel, the emergent discipline of industrial ecology has
directed attention to the whole life environmental costs of
a product or service, taking what is termed a life-cycle perspective. While, in principle, a straightforward concept, the lifecycle approach can be swamped by complexity and the minutia
of data requirements. Nonetheless, there is a coherence behind
seeking to identify all aspects of the impact of a product, not
least to ensure that improvements made in one area do not
conflict with others. Several papers in this special issue seek
to use models based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) concepts
in order to address specific research questions about key
choices and policies as they apply to the automotive industry.
Moreover, given that, as noted above, the resolution of multiple
requirements to attain a more sustainable industry may well
result in the problem becoming so large and difficult that it

becomes impossible, it is practical at least to focus on more

manageable problems. For these reasons, there is a tendency
to step back from systemic solutions, and to examine, in
more detail, particular aspects of the industry. Hence, the organisation of articles in this special issue broadly reflects
a life-cycle perspective moving from design, to production
(including supply chain), through use, and on to disposal and
recycling. Of course, to some extent, the boundaries are arbitrary, as is the assignment of papers to a particular section.
Measures adopted to comply with End of Life Vehicle regulations in Europe, for instance, could be seen as both an end-oflife cycle issue and a design issue. However, the organisation of
the articles has been done as a guide only; readers may make
their own categorisations subsequently.
3. Design
One area where LCA as a formal choice methodology has
been applied is that of material selection for products during
the design phase. Typically, a material may offer particular advantages in one or more aspects over the incumbent material,
but equally offer certain disadvantages. An example offered
here is that of the article of Tharumarajah and Koltun addressing the use of magnesium for automotive components. This is
an overtly technical paper in which the merits of the material
are quantified against the performance of other materials, principally steel and aluminium.
This approach to understanding how and why certain technical choices are made in the design of components can be
contrasted with the paper from Van den Hoed, in which an
account is provided of the institutional isomorphism that
arises as companies seek security and risk reduction through
the pursuit of similar technologies. In this account, relative
technical merit is secondary compared with the desire to
copy leading firms for fear of being left behind in technology
development. Van den Hoed argues that the automotive industry is not always associated with radical innovation. Complex
operations, low margins, and high risks tend to favor more
incremental and process oriented innovations. Radical technology adoption is rare as it requires major shifts in competencies and automotive operations.
As Nieuwenhuis and Wells [3] have previously emphasized
that radical change in the automotive industry may be required
in order to respond to increasingly demanding environmental
regulations worldwide. A central component of unsustainability in todays car industry is the internal combustion engine
(ICE), associated with emissions, fossil fuel use and noise.
A transition to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) requires a radical and costly shift in automotive operations, and thus, cannot
be expected. Nevertheless, in recent years significant amounts
of resources have been invested on the development of fuel
cell vehicles (FCV), in which the fuel cell replaces the combustion engine.
The third paper in this group is different again, with the
contribution from Cousins, Garcia-Bueno and Palomares taking a more visionary and normative stance to advocate a particular design solution and innovative approach to low-carbon

Introduction / Journal of Cleaner Production 15 (2007) 989e993

vehicles. While much academic study is of necessity about

concrete phenomenon as they exist in the world, the approach
in this paper is to put aside the need to find existing best practice or to quantify existing events. Instead, the focus is on the
creative expression of a potential technology and business
combination, a design not just of a product but also of
a new approach to the automotive industry, which could provide the basis for a quantum leap in environmental performance. Interestingly, the approach adopted by the authors is
to challenge the power race evident in the automotive industry. Therein lies one of the largely untold stories about the
gains made to date in the performance of cars: the substantial
improvements in engine design and other aspects of the vehicle have not entirely (or even largely) been directed at environmental benefits.
4. Manufacturing
From the 1980s onwards, the vast majority of automakers
have adopted a pro-active attitude towards the reduction of
the environmental impact of their production processes. Every
major high-volume car manufacturer has worked towards increased levels of environmental performance and there are
no doubts that improvements have been made.
The reason for this is simple: the incorporation of ecological principles makes business sense. Fundamentally, the pressure to cut costs in every possible manner has driven vehicle
manufacturers to work towards resource productivity and minimisation of waste. In this respect, platform consolidation and
modular assembly, similar to several other initiatives, were
adopted in the 1990s to increase overall resource productivity
in automobile manufacturing and the chances of reaching
greater economies of scale (for details, see the article of
Orsato and Wells in this issue). In this case, the reduction of
the environmental impact during vehicle manufacturing was
a consequence of strategies that aimed at increasing the overall
productivity of firms.
The economic principles guiding business action also justified, beyond-compliance strategies, in vehicle assembling, encompassed in the concept of lean production, as prescribed by
Womack et al. [4]. Although the relationship between the
adoption of lean production and the environmental performance of industrial processes still requires research, one can
anticipate that such an approach will facilitate the process
of improving the eco-efficiency of automobile factories. Not
least, the essence of the Toyota Production System that
formed the original template for lean production is to eliminate waste from all processes and activities. It is clear that
eco-factories are not in themselves an answer, particularly if
they are used to produce an unsustainable product [5]. While
ethical commitments might explain why some car manufacturers voluntarily adopted these principles, such as Ford and
Toyota, the search for a competitive edge also influenced
such actions. The most recent manifestation of this strategic
intent has been demonstrated by the determined market deployment of hybrid vehicles by Toyota, often in the face of
criticisms from other vehicle manufacturers who have argued

991

that the technology is uneconomic, in order to secure market

leadership.
The article of Zah, Hischier, Le~ao, and Braun shows that
replacing glass fibers with natural fibers holds economic, environmental and social improvement potentials for the automotive industry. The application of curaua fiber composites in the
automotive industry bears both economic potential due to the
low life cycle costs and social advantages due to the high
added value in the under-developed Amazon region in Brazil.
To realize any significant environmental benefits, however, the
curaua-based composites would have to be lighter than their
glass fiber-based counterparts.
Zhu, Sarkis, and Lai argue that increasing pressures from
a variety of directions have caused Chinese automobile supply
chains to consider and initiate implementation of green supply
chain management (GSCM) practices to improve both their
economic and environmental performances. Expanding on
some earlier work investing general GSCM practices in China,
the paper explores the GSCM pressures/drivers (motivators),
initiatives and performance of the automotive supply chain using an empirical analysis of automotive enterprises within
China. GSCM implementation has only slightly improved
environmental and operational performances, and has not
resulted in significant economic performance improvement.
In a European context, looking at the case of Volkswagen,
Koplin, Seuring and Mesterhram analyse the ways in which
purchasing policies have been amended in an attempt to integrate social and environmental standards, with resulting
changes in sourcing and supply structures. Interestingly, this
includes the operation of an early warning system to detect
potential problems before they emerge on a scale that would
damage brand reputation.
In a second case study of Volkswagen, Gernucks, Buchgeister and Schebek examine the practical application of secondgeneration Environmental Management Systems to the
manufacturing activities of the company. The study reveals
the difficulties in finding a robust methodology to define the
environmental impacts of those activities in a manner that
can then be applied in a systematic and comprehensive way
across all manufacturing plants in the company.
5. Vehicle use
At the turn of the millennium, the internal combustion engines powering (new) cars that entered OECD roads emitted
around 95% less pollutants into the air than their counterparts
did in 1975 [6]. From a perspective privileging incrementalism, these figures suggest the environmental performance of
internal combustion engines (ICEs) has been greatly enhanced
in the past decades. A clear-cut explanation for such achievements can be located in the imposition of emission standards
upon car manufacturers.
In light of ever-tightening regulations on automobile emissions, one could ask: why have alternatives for the internal
combustion engine, such as vehicles powered by fuel cells,
have not yet become a market reality? Indeed, the use of hybrid petroleelectric power vehicles to achieve environmental

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Introduction / Journal of Cleaner Production 15 (2007) 989e993

benefits in terms of improved fuel-efficiency has recently galvanized interest. On the one hand, within the industry itself,
there is much debate as to whether companies like Toyota,
which has taken the lead on this technology, are justified in absorbing some of the marginal costs of proceeding rather than
passing them on, in full, to their consumers. On the other
hand, consumers and regulators want to know how substantial
the benefits are from hybrid technologies. The contribution
from Haan, Peters and Scholz makes interesting reading in
this context. The authors argue that hybrid powertrains are
considered to be a promising method to raise the overall
fuel-efficiency of passenger cars. The authors investigate two
aspects relevant to the promotion of hybrid vehicles as part
of an energy use reduction strategy. First, are hybrid cars
accompanied by rebound effects, which counteract their
increased fuel-efficiency? Second, do tax rebates indeed lead
to higher sales numbers?
Often, the assumption is that the term consumers means
private individuals buying cars in the market. In reality, that
is not necessarily the case with respect to cars; particularly
in the more established markets such as that in the UK. Indeed,
in these markets the traditional private consumer can actually
be a minority e they tend to buy used cars. Rather, the market
for new cars is dominated by corporate or public sector buyers,
and by various intermediary categories of purchaser for whom
the cost of acquisition and use are not entirely born personally.
As a consequence, the composition of the total fleet of vehicles
in use, which is determined by the characteristics of the stock
of new cars bought each year, is heavily influenced by these
corporate and public sectors.
The contribution from Lane and Potter emphasises the importance of understanding this type of consumer. The authors
studied how the fleet managers of private firms and the public
sector go about their purchasing choices. In fact, the authors
revisit the theme previously addressed by Cousins, GarciaBueno and Palomares Coronado e the dominance of High
Carbon Vehicles on the UK roads (see Section 3). The authors
report the initial findings of two research projects that identify
attitudinal barriers inhibiting the adoption of cleaner vehicles
in the UK. The first, conducted for the Low Carbon Vehicle
Partnership by Ecolane Transport Consultancy, reviews the
evidence of consumer attitudes to low-carbon cars. The study
shows that car buyers have a poor knowledge of cleaner car
technologies, the environmental impacts of road transport
and car ownership costs. The second study, initiated within
the Open Universitys Design Innovation Group, identifies
key hotspot factors that influence consumers adoption of
low-carbon products.
In his contribution on product service systems (PSS) for the
automotive industry, Williams addresses the main feature of
the automotive industry that mitigates against such concepts:
the business model adopted by automakers. The author investigates the actual and potential contributions that PSS can
make in moving beyond incremental technological improvements towards a focus on behavioural changes and system innovation. The identified initiatives are then assessed against
the key evaluative criteria in an effort to reveal their actual

or potential contribution to meeting the sustainability challenges of the automotive industry.

Vergragt and Brown also address the necessary learning for
sustainable mobility with their rather provocative notion of
bounded socio-technical experiments. All too often the environmental and sustainability debate can degenerate into the
merely technical, thereby ignoring the crucial mediating processes of civil society. The authors, therefore, advocate the
use of intensive, reflexive case study work to understand the
difficult and complex interactions between technology and society. The solution to unsustainability of the auto industry will
require input from all segments of the society, and must include
technological innovation, changes in the physical infrastructure
and land use, and social, cultural, and institutional changes.
The last paper in this section of the special edition raises an
issue with respect to sustainable mobility that is surprisingly
often neglected: that of the deaths and injuries caused to people by cars and other vehicles in use. In those countries that
are experiencing rapid economic growth, and rapid motorisation, Wells relates qualitatively distinct automobility cultures
to the burgeoning rate of death and injury. Such is the scale
of the problem that it is rapidly becoming the primary health
concern with respect to vehicles and their use, and unless a resolution is found then all other efforts at a sustainable automotive industry will come to naught.
6. End-of-life vehicles
Perhaps one of the least understood aspects of environmental performance is that of the treatment of products after they
have reached the end of their useful functioning period. Moreover, prompted significantly by European regulations for the
treatment of so-called end-of-life-vehicles (ELVs), the issue
has become very much a concern for the industry itself. As
a consequence, there are contributions in this special issue
that seek to quantify and understand some of the impacts.
Now, in the first instance, it must be acknowledged that to
date no work has been done to relate, at the macro level, the
ways in which over-supply of vehicles generates accelerated
removal of cars from their useful functioning period. The underlying assumption has always been that, in environmental
terms, the benefits of introducing new technologies (through
the medium of new cars, rather than for example retrofitting
existing vehicles) outweigh the costs compared with keeping
old cars in circulation. The contribution from Spielmann and
Althaus speaks to this issue, in the context of Switzerland, to
ask whether the frequent replacement of cars can reduce the
environmental burden of transportation. The authors show
that trade-offs between environmental impacts during the use
and the end-of-life phases of vehicles limit the legitimacy of
governments to regulate.
As developments during the 1990s in the EU suggested, there
are also several possible ways of designing and managing the
system for collection, treatment, reuse, and recycling cars, and
the selection of one particular solution tends, obviously, to be
controversial. In such a situation auto industrialists in Europe
favoured the transformation of ELVs into a non-competitive

Introduction / Journal of Cleaner Production 15 (2007) 989e993

issue. Automakers formed alliances among themselves and,

later in the process, with local governments [7]. While car manufacturers did not want to be the only players who would bear the
costs of processing ELVs, national governments did not want to
run the risk of causing a negative economic spiral of both higher
prices and unemployment. In general, the economic principles
guiding current systems of production significantly inhibited
ecological modernisation of end-of-life vehicle practices.
Six years after the approval of the EUs ELV directive, the
right approach to ELV processing remains controversial in EU
countries. The last four articles in this issue revisit and provide
empirical illumination on the controversies surrounding the
ultimate phase of the life-cycle of cars.
Smink focuses on how ELV approaches have changed over
time in Denmark. She examines the extent in which environmental regulations have driven change in the car-dismantling
trade. Seitz tackles a rather different set of problems with
the contribution on remanufacturing of engines. Over the
past decade, there has been an increasing interest in product
take-back, product recovery and the (re-)distribution of these
products. The research is based on in-depth case studies within
the remanufacturing facilities of a major European vehicle
manufacturer. The article examines whether the classic motives for product recovery are applicable to automotive
remanufacturing.
Duval and MacLean present a case study from the other side
of the Atlantic. The authors pose that the growing disposition of
plastics from ELV vehicles has put increasing pressure on North
American landfill capacity. Financial and life-cycle assessment
models were developed and applied to the current and proposed
recycling business operations of AADCO Automotive Incorporated (AADCO), a leading Canadian automotive dismantling
company. However, in spite of the environmental benefits, the
magnitude of the added costs for AADCO to participate in the
post-consumer automotive plastics recycling network resulted
in an unprofitable value proposition for the company.
Finally, Giannouli, de Haan, Keller, and Samara show how
far science-based policy has progressed in the European
Union. The paper presents the model developed within the
TRENDS (TRansport and ENvironment Database System)
project for the prediction of waste produced from road vehicles, both at their end-of-life and during vehicle operation.
Model results are presented for all material components as
well as tires for the entire EU15 as a time series from 1990
to 2020. They were validated against data originating from
various sources, including the European Environment Agency
and the European Tyre Recycling Association. Finally,
methods for the future enhancement of the quality of the
model forecasts are discussed.
7. Conclusions and signposts to the future
This special issue stands as testimony to the depth and variety of work being undertaken around the world in an effort to
make one of the most influential industries in the world
more sustainable. In each case, further streams of research

993

are likely as solutions are sought on myriad levels in a complex

and ever-changing operational context. The value of an industry (rather than discipline or methodological) focus is ably
demonstrated by the contributions: the world is in desperate
need of real and substantial progress in this and many other
industries, and to be plausible and effective that progress
must be grounded in an understanding of the world beyond
the boundaries of academic theorisation. In this respect, this
special issue represents an academic call to arms, the start
of a research process rather than an end. It is to be hoped
that others will be inspired both by the contributions made
and, equally, by the failures of those contributions! What
have we missed? Where have we gone wrong? What could
we have done better? These are the questions that we hope
the special issue will stimulate. We need more grand visions
and unifying concepts just as we need more detailed methodologies and technical answers. In particular, we hope the contributions here have shown how vitally important it is to go
beyond the merely technological, and to embrace a truly
multi-disciplinary or pan-disciplinary approach in future research and analysis, embedded in the confrontation of very
real, hard, problems: for that way lies a more sustainable future.
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environment and society. London: Edward Elgar; 2004. p. 270e306.
[3] Nieuwenhuis P, Wells P. Filling new product niches for greater sustainability. Financial Times Automotive Environment Analyst 1999;59:23e5.
[4] Womack J, Jones D, Roos D. The machine that changed the world. Sydney: Maxwell Macmillan International; 1990.
[5] Tukker A, Cohen M. Industrial ecology and the transport system: can Ford
shape the future again? Journal of Industrial Ecology 2004;8(3):14e7.
[6] Graedel T, Allenby B. Industrial ecology and the automobile. USA:
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R.J. Orsato*
Insead Business in Society (IBiS), INSEAD,
Boulevard de Constance,
77305 Fontainebleau Cedex, France
*Corresponding author.
E-mail address: renato.orsato@insead.edu
P. Wells
Centre for Automotive Industry Research & ESRC Centre for
Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and
Society (BRASS), Cardiff Business School,
Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, UK
E-mail address: wellspe@cardiff.ac.uk
Accepted 28 May 2006
Available online 13 October 2006