- Diesel-powered BMWs in Germany are leaving the factory with diesel made from waste cooking oil
- They only have enough to get to the dealership, but owners can fuel them at public stations
- The automaker is also implanting a direct recycling process for EV battery materials
BMW is putting waste to good use, with announcements that it’s sending its diesel-powered vehicles to German buyers with cooking-oil diesel in their tanks, and that its new pilot project will send battery waste directly back into battery production.
The renewable diesel is called HVO 100, which stands for hydrotreated vegetable oil, along with 100% purity. It’s made from various waste oils, including used cooking oil; and while it’s been available in other European countries for several years, in Germany it was approved for sale in filling stations in May of 2024.
The fuel doesn’t contain conventional biodiesel, and the oil must be considered sustainable, so there’s no palm oil in it. It has the potential for 90% reduced CO2 emissions compared to fossil-fuel diesel, and BMW said it’s better for cold starts and is resistant to microbial contamination, or “diesel plague,” a situation where microorganisms such as fungus or yeast can multiply and block the fuel system.
Automakers ship vehicles from their factories with a minimum amount of fuel – usually just enough to get them on or off a transport truck or railway car and then to the dealership, which fills each vehicle as it’s sold. Because of this, BMW will only put five to eight litres of HV 100 in the tanks as vehicles leave the assembly line, starting in January 2025; but added that diesel engines in specific models made since March 2015 can use the fuel, which is available in public fuel stations.
BMW uses a carrier service to ship parts about 40 km from a supplier to its plant in Munich several times a day, and since March of 2023, four of the trucks have used HV 100, with two more being added.
The Munich-based automaker also announced that, along with joint-venture partner Encory, it is building a Cell Recycling Competence Centre (CRCC) for battery cells. This will use “direct” recycling, where battery cells and leftover material from battery cell production will be dismantled for their components. This material will then be directly used to make new battery cells in BMW’s pilot production. The CRCC represents an investment of about €10 million, with construction slated to begin in the second half of 2025.
In conventional recycling, materials are removed from battery waste and reverted to their original state, using energy-intensive thermal or chemical processing. Instead, BMW plans to separate lithium, cobalt, graphite, manganese, nickel, and copper from the waste, and then introduce them directly into cell production in a process developed by BMW Group.
The automaker estimates that once the process is implemented on a large scale at the CRCC, it will be able to recycle battery cell material “in the mid-double-digit tonne range” each year. The plant will also capture and save the electrical energy as the cells are discharged, and use it to operate the recycling system.
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