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Sustainable interior design Alternative materials for non-animal cars

The non-animal car – Volkswagen is opting for alternatives to leather upholstery

Non-animal interior materials made from plastic bottles: Designer Heike Hustedt explains how Volkswagen is optimising the ecological footprint of car interiors. The objective being recycling.

Volkswagen is aiming to reduce group-wide greenhouse gas emissions in the production and use of its cars by 30 percent compared with 2018 by 2030. The manufacturer has set itself the goal of being net climate-neutral by 2050. To achieve this target, Volkswagen is analysing and optimising the entire lifecycle of the cars: From basic research, through development and production, to recycling after end of use.

Designer Heike Hustedt has been working at Volkswagen for 20 years. In the Color & Trim division, she selects materials and designs surfaces on and in the car. Her focus is on developing sustainable materials for series production. In an interview, Heike Hustedt explains the development process and series production of sustainable materials in the interior surfaces division.

Mrs Hustedt, what is your main focus at the moment?

The Color & Trim division generally focusses on all the materials for surfaces on and in the car. Everything that the customer sees goes through our hands. We specify structures, colours and the surface finish: Whether the surface is soft, coarse or rigid. My main focus at the moment is on the all-electric ID. family, which we want to design as sustainably as possible – and without any animal products.

The non-animal car – Volkswagen is opting for alternatives to leather upholstery
Volkswagen has already been using chrome-free leather for 25 years.
Heike Hustedt
Color & Trim designer
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How does Volkswagen generally approach making a material more sustainable?

We have a lot of experience in materials science, which is why we know the potential of our materials and know where to start. This usually happens in close collaboration with developers and suppliers. For example: Volkswagen has already been using chrome-free leather for 25 years. In the Volkswagen Touareg, we have been using a leather that employs a processed extract from olive tree cuttings as a tannin since 2019. The olive leaves that fall off the trees when harvesting the olives are usually burned.

The non-animal car – Volkswagen is opting for alternatives to leather upholstery
The leather seats in the Touareg R plug-in hybrid are made from Puglia leather – they are tanned sustainably using extracts from olive leaves.
The non-animal car – Volkswagen is opting for alternatives to leather upholstery
The leather seats in the Touareg R plug-in hybrid are made from Puglia leather – they are tanned sustainably using extracts from olive leaves.
In this instance, a supplier contacted us early on and presented the tanning process. That won us over right away, since wet-green tanning is a very sustainable procedure. The short transport routes are another advantage: The leather comes from Europe, primarily from South Germany, and is tanned in Italy.

Why isn’t this sustainable leather being used in the ID. family?

We want to avoid using any animal products whatsoever in our electric cars. In line with this decision, materials such as Dinamica (ArtVelours) have come into focus. This is a microfibre fabric that feels like suede. It has a matt, coarse surface and is very soft. In the ID. cars, we combine it with smooth imitation leather, generating value and recognisability throughout the entire ID. family.

We want to avoid using any animal products whatsoever in our electric cars.
Heike Hustedt
Color & Trim designer
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Imitation leather is based on petroleum. Which approaches are you taking here?

Imitation leather is in high demand in various markets, such as the USA. It is seen as robust and easy to clean. This is why Volkswagen has always offered imitation leather upholstery in many markets. Another factor: For customers wishing to avoid animal products, imitation leather is often the only alternative to leather.

When it comes to sustainability, artificial leather has previously had drawbacks because it contains a high percentage of petroleum-based components. Our approach to improving the environmental footprint of imitation leather in the short-term is to increase the percentage of organic components. For example, using coffee leather, which we are currently developing: The raw material already contains a percentage of organic-based substitutes. We are further increasing the percentage by replacing the fillers with coffee silverskin, which is a by-product of coffee roasting. This has enabled us to attain an impressive percentage of organic materials of more than 50 percent, and improve the ecological footprint of imitation leather in the process.

You want to increase the organic percentage of imitation leather in order to be able to make imitation leather more recyclable. What material are you currently planning to use for this?

We are aspiring towards as high a percentage of recyclable materials as possible. As a hybrid material consisting of various raw materials, recycling imitation leather requires a great deal of effort. This is why we are also working on long-term alternatives at the same time, which are better suited to recycling processes. However, coffee leather is a huge step forward compared with the status quo.

Give us a brief overview: How does this kind of material development work?

In the interior division, we usually outline a development objective, then Volkswagen development approaches suppliers and requests test materials. Based on this, we focus on developing an optimised material that is suitable for series production. This is the case with coffee leather: The raw material for innovative imitation leather is supplied by the Heimbs coffee roasting house based in Braunschweig. They are able to produce on an industrial scale and are working very closely with us.

As a global volume manufacturer, Volkswagen needs this industrial-scale capability. It is not enough for a material to pass the right tests in the lab. It is just as important for our suppliers to be able to produce on a large scale, or to be ready to develop in this direction in collaboration with Volkswagen – and to expand themselves or change their offering in the process.

What is the next major milestone in your line of work?

For us, the highest possible percentage of recyclable materials is very important. We are currently working on a special edition in the ID. family. In these cars, the roof liner, fabrics, carpets, seats, door panels and finishes are made from a sustainable material that comprises up to 100 percent recycled materials – for example, plastic bottles. This high percentage of recycleable materials in a production interior significantly sets us apart from the competition. And this is a lighthouse project within the Volkswagen Group. As an example: Either 140 recycled 1.5-litre plastic bottles or 380 recycled 500-ml plastic bottles are used in the ID.42. Volkswagen is thereby taking on a pioneering role and proving that we are serious about our commitment to sustainability.

The non-animal car – Volkswagen is opting for alternatives to leather upholstery
Heike Hustedt (r.), Color & Trim Designer
The non-animal car – Volkswagen is opting for alternatives to leather upholstery
Seats made from recycled plastic bottles: 140 1.5-litre plastic bottles, or 380 500-ml bottles are used in the ID.4.

Could you briefly outline the long-term perspective of material development.

We are adopting various approaches. With products such as coffee leather we are swapping individual components, such as fillers, for what are known as “NawaRos” in German – an acronym standing for renewable raw materials. In the long term, the journey towards sustainability will predominantly involve recycling. An important step on the journey is reducing the number of components. We are also reducing the number of elements of components, and the number of material layers in the component. This also means changing processes.

If we are able to reduce the number of components by half or even a third, an important requirement for recycling will have been met. The final important building block is optimising recycling processes. From the outset we need to create materials in such a way that we can hand them over to a recycling process at the end of the car’s service life.

What are the challenges here?

The biggest challenge is designing the automobile. That’s where we designers come into play. If we are able to build panels or doors from just one part, that would be exactly the right way to go. In production, our head designer Jozef Kabaň is already working on reducing the number of possible variations in favour of sustainability and value. It might also be necessary to promote understanding of this approach. 

For example, media outlets often describe synthetics in the car as being worth less than other materials. But single-origin synthetics that are easy to recycle are not a cost-saving measure – they are paving the way for a recycling economy. The less mixed material used in a car, the easier it is for us to reuse materials more than once. We feel that this is the most sustainable way to produce an automobile.

Which raw materials come into question here?

On the one hand, those that last for the duration of the car’s service life and are easy to recycle. And on the other hand, those that look good, feel great and are viewed as valuable by customers. We have high hopes for PET and polypropylene. Both plastics can be recycled very easily, if they are kept clean. And these aspirations are not unique to automotive construction, you also see them in the fashion industry, for example. Makers of trainers are already manufacturing shoes that are made of just one, fully-recyclable, material. The shoe is produced using a 3D printer, knitted in part, welded in part – but it is made from just one material. After use, the customer can send it back, the shoe is fully transferred back into the cycle. An automobile is an incomparably more complex product with a far longer useful life. But that is the path we have taken.

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