Unveiling insights into future automotive material demands

Ricardo, on behalf of UKRI’s Transforming Foundation Industries (TFI) Challenge, delivered by Innovate UK, EPSRC and ESRC, presents its final report on "Demand-led Innovation for the Automotive Sector: Material Requirements for 2030 and Beyond." This study consolidates an extensive literature assessment of the evolving landscape of automotive material demands.

The TFI Challenge is an initiative to transform the UK’s foundation industries, increasing competitiveness, creating jobs and driving environmentally sustainable growth.

The Ricardo study focuses on the automotive sector, a pivotal consumer of foundation industry materials. In the report, we explore existing and future demands for automotive materials as well as analyse the drivers shaping changes in material demand and requirements.

Key findings

The automotive industry needs innovative materials that enable lightweight vehicles, have a lower carbon footprint, and increase recycled material content in the vehicle and its recyclability at the end of life, compared to established materials. Vehicle OEMs are driven by the end-users (vehicle buyers) and so also need to maintain the safety, quality, durability, and performance standards and competitiveness of their products, which results in more general cross-cutting challenges for material demand:

1. A need to identify solutions to improve the cost-effectiveness/affordability of innovative materials 
2.  A need to identify solutions to improve and validate the sustainability of materials 
3.  A need for a dependable supply of innovative materials of suitable performance (grade) 
4. A need for capacity building and upskilling within the sector to adapt to new processes associated with the use of innovative materials 

To address these material innovation challenges, a range of potential interventions were identified from the roundtable workshop and through Ricardo’s analysis. These are: 

• Funding for research and demonstration projects 
• Capacity building 
• Commercialisation support for innovative materials
• The establishment of a stakeholder community 

Download the final report

Demand-led Innovation for the Automotive Sector: Material Requirements for 2030 and Beyond

Download the initial findings report

Demand-led Innovation for the Automotive Sector: Material Requirements for 2030 and Beyond 

Find out more

• Read more about the report in the UKRI blog: Navigating the Road Ahead: Demand-Led Innovation for Materials in the Automotive Sector
• To discuss the content of the report or learn more about this study please reach out to the delivery team at automotive.innovation@ricardo.com
• Sustainability support for the automotive sector