Conceptualization of a digital product passport to enable circular and sustainable automotive value chains – vehicle circularity ID use case in China

¹ Automotive Data of China Co., Ltd., Tianjin 300000, China
² China Automotive Technology & Research Center Co., Ltd, Tianjin 300000, China

^* Corresponding author: liulizhe@catarc.ac.cn

Abstract

The green and sustainable cyclic development of the global automotive industry has become an important issue, and the synergy between digitalisation and greening is becoming more and more obvious. The automotive industry is a resource-intensive industry with a long supply chain and complex material structure. Therefore, it is crucial to fully integrate and interact the information of the whole value chain of automotive products in a standardised way to promote the sustainable management of automotive products. The Digital Product Passport (DPP) proposed by the EU and other regions has attracted much attention as an enabler for a transparent and traceable value chain as well as for improving the management of the entire product life cycle. China has already started the exploration of digital product passports for the battery, textile, and steel industries, while the research on automotive product passports is still in a relatively early stage. In this paper, we propose the concept of 'vehicle circularity ID' for automotive digital product passports, and describe for the first time the information required to realise a sustainable and circular value chain. An vehicle circularity ID requires the identification of stakeholders, linkages to other industries, and a systematic approach. By systematically investigating the attributes and characteristics of automotive products at each stage of their lifecycle, we constructed a four-category model for the Vehicle Circularity ID that includes basic information, sustainability and circularity, maintenance, and value chain actors, and reversed the process of constructing the Vehicle Circularity ID by collection-interaction-processing-access. Interaction-Processing-Access' integrated technology implementation route. The conceptual model and technological route of the Vehicle Circularity ID constructed in this paper can, on the one hand, provide information about the potential of sustainable management of automobiles in terms of DPP, which can help to enhance the sustainable development of product cycle, and on the other hand, help policy makers and practitioners to implement the Vehicle Circularity ID.