Environmental benefits
A minimum requirement for an alternative to the existing system is that it makes an improved contribution to sustainability in terms of environmental performance. The MFR project offers the following potential benefits:
• Low-volume production systems allow the use of alternatives to (heavy) all-steel bodies and therefore make alternative power / fuel systems more viable at lower risk, resulting in greener vehicles;
• The production systems carry significantly lower per-vehicle environmental costs in terms of carbon emissions, water consumption, pollution, in-bound and out-bound logistics, and manufacturing scrap, resulting in greener manufacturing;
• Low-volume production allows the assembly of vehicles optimised to local conditions, and hence as eco-efficient as possible with due regard to prevailing circumstances and potentialities;
• The modular design and circular value system significantly extends the useful life of products for a given ‘investment’ of scarce earth resources;
• The circular value capture system reduces the pressure to over-produce, which is one of the greatest ‘hidden’ of the environmental costs of the contemporary automotive industry, resulting as it does in rapid depreciation and product obsolescence, and hence premature vehicle scrapping.
