Lifecycle Monitoring for the Automotive Eco-Sustainability

The growth sustainability requires dramatic changes to lower the natural resources consumption and the surroundings pollution, by recovery/remediation processes. The EU policy aims at the extended producers/suppliers responsibility, with effective charges on the products allowed to be put on the market, used and called-back, in view of the properly small impact and transparent lifecycle acknowledgement. This leads to «extensions» in designing the new offers with integrated monitoring and service functions. The design for the lifecycle eco-effectiveness is accomplishment, better qualifying the far-seeing companies according to the EU eco-policy. The idea is to reach the duty visibility, by the extended plug-and-play concept, based on series of integrated design options, assigning the structural and functional modules, for the operation monitoring, the reliability assessment and the impact appraisal. This instrumental setting includes intangible information/communication aids, to confer ambient intelligence abilities. This way, the on-process visibility is assured, and exploited for on-duty servicing and end-of-life processing. The example case chosen deals with the critical situation of the parts manufactured in plastics, which are deemed to represent most relevant portion in the cars to come. The following recovery options are possible: - the reuse of the reconditioned items, according to suitably assessed life-extension opportunities; - the recycling of the warn-out components, with the regeneration and reusing of the materials; - the thermal recovery of residual stuffs, within careful handling and pollution-safe warnings; - the reduction to registered ASR, automobile shredding residue, within the EU directives limits. The on-board information system includes, as innovative feature, the resort to identifying tags or labels, to be read and written through wireless links. The technology exploits cheap and compact supports, allowing the labelling of the component, from production, to lifecycle, with an identifying code. The RFID, Radio Frequency Identification Device, is privileged, as ideal means for the component traceability and the history, use modes/styles and cumulated issues storing.