Can we finally recycle all of the metal in scrap cars?
Scrap cars could be used to build new electric vehicles thanks to a new process for turning various aluminium alloys into a strong and mouldable metal
By Madeleine Cuff
2 September 2025
Scrap vehicles contain many different metal alloys, which can be hard to recycle
Marc Hill/Alamy
A new way to recycle the metal from scrap cars could eliminate millions of tonnes of waste each year and cut the carbon emissions from producing virgin aluminium.
For decades, much of the scrap aluminium in cars has been recycled into a low-grade cast alloy for use as engine blocks in new combustion engines. But as the car industry transitions to building only electric vehicles, there is nowhere for this low-grade scrap metal to go.
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Without a solution, the world risks creating “mountains” of unusable scrap and emitting millions of tonnes of additional carbon dioxide by producing more virgin aluminium for vehicle manufacturing, warns Stefan Pogatscher at the University of Leoben in Austria.
“If the engine blocks go away because of electrification, at the moment we have no sink for the scrap,” he warns. “That means it cannot be used any more.”
Together with colleagues, Pogatscher has developed a new process to recycle the metal from scrap cars – which in Europe alone amounts to between 7 and 9 million tonnes of waste per year – into a new high-grade aluminium alloy that can be used to make a variety of components for new cars.
