Samantha Krietemeyer, Manager, Engineering, TE Connectivity
Material selection is often treated as an engineering and manufacturing decision, but its effects reach well beyond the production line. Early design choices influence what can be recycled or reused at the end of a vehicle’s life, along with a component’s overall carbon footprint.
In this interview, Samantha Krietemeyer, Manager, Engineering at TE Connectivity, discusses how life cycle assessment is shaping EV component development. She explains what a product carbon footprint measures, where most of that footprint originates, and how engineers can account for sustainability while still meeting performance requirements.
She also discusses why sustainability is becoming another design variable alongside quality and cost, and what that shift means for engineers.
This conversation is also available as an episode of EV Talk, which you can listen to here.
Here’s what she had to say…
How is life cycle assessment shaping engineering decisions earlier in EV and component development, and why do these assessments matter?
I wasn’t initially aware of how vehicles were going to be recycled. It didn’t entirely make sense to me until I started talking with more partners and suppliers across the entire value stream.
For those who may not know, some of the larger portions of the vehicle are removed and the fluids are drained. The vehicle then essentially goes into a large shredder, and the different pieces and materials have to be sorted afterward.
Without similar materials grouped together, it becomes much harder to separate them. So when we think about a full life cycle analysis and designing for recyclability or disassembly, it has to happen earlier in the process.
If it doesn’t, the result is rework or design changes, which are never easy for a large manufacturing company or its customers. So we have to look at how we can solve the same problems in a different way.
When an engineer sees a carbon footprint attached to a component, what exactly has been measured?
We measure what’s called cradle to gate. That means we work with suppliers to understand the materials we’re actually purchasing and receiving from them.
The supplier provides a product carbon footprint for those materials as a starting point. From there, we measure through our manufacturing process until the product leaves our door. So the product carbon footprint we provide to a customer covers the raw material we receive and our manufacturing process, up until the part ships.
For a metal-intensive EV component, where does most of its carbon footprint come from, and how much can engineers influence it?
The majority of a product carbon footprint sits within the material. The material choice, including any metal used in the process, is where the bulk of that calculation comes from.
Even after the material is selected, engineering still has a good amount of influence over how that material leaves our doors. We’re designing to meet customer requirements and the other requirements being asked of us. When we pick a material, we try to understand its downstream impact, along with how we can adapt our design to make more sustainable or environmentally friendly materials work.
Why might two plants that build the same part report different carbon footprints, and how much should engineers weigh that difference?
Supplier data is very important, which is why we try to provide as many resources and as much support as we can to help suppliers find and calculate those numbers to the standards the industry requires.
Two plants producing the same part can report different numbers. How the processes are executed, along with different waste streams and other environmental factors within each plant, can change the results. But the best way for engineers to influence that is to optimize the design as much as possible beforehand.
Although the numbers can vary somewhat depending on where a part is manufactured, most of the product carbon footprint comes from the material that’s chosen. So the plant producing the part is less of a concern.
Material choices made early in component design affect an EV’s carbon footprint and what can be recovered at the end of its life.
Where do lower-carbon materials or design changes create the biggest challenges for performance and validation?
Performance testing is crucial to make sure parts meet the requirements we need. Whatever materials or parts we’re asked to design, we still need to deliver a quality part that performs well. Much of the design is driven by what’s required of it, whether those are customer, industry, or application requirements, and we still validate to verify those requirements are met.
Even if we can’t use the most efficient or lowest-carbon material, the part still has to perform. So there’s a trade-off we have to work with. It’s similar to designing for quality or cost, where we had to account for different variables but, in the end, still had to make sure the part performed.
Recycled resin brings material variability into connector housings. How do engineers account for it without loosening the requirements that matter?
With resin materials, we try to choose from a clean list to begin with. We have teams looking specifically for resins and metals that meet industry standards.
So from an engineering perspective, we’re still picking the material that makes sense. When it comes to variability, the question is still whether the material meets the requirements being asked of us. We sample and validate those materials to make sure they’re something we can stand behind in terms of quality.
How reliable is product-level carbon data today compared with modeled averages?
As I mentioned, it’s crucial that we work with our suppliers to get the best product carbon footprint data possible. Early in the sustainability journey, much of the data we relied on was estimated or averaged.
As we continue through this process and learn more from our suppliers about their product carbon footprints, we’re becoming more confident in the data, just like anyone else. When we provide carbon footprint data, we follow industry standards and work with the teams creating those standards. That way, we’re part of those discussions and can provide the best data using the required calculations.
How can disassembly and material recovery become EV design requirements rather than sustainability goals?
The end-of-life vehicle is something we haven’t had to consider much in the past. In certain countries, the average vehicle is around 11 years old. This is an exciting time in engineering because we’ve gone through different design phases, such as designing for quality, cost, or manufacturing.
Now we’re adding another variable, which is design for sustainability, or what many people call design for disassembly. When a component needs to survive 10 to 15 years over the life of a vehicle, what happens to it after that is a problem that hasn’t been solved in the past.
It’s exciting to look at different materials and consider how they can be recycled together or separated. We’re also looking at different adhesives and other ways to separate parts rather than keep them joined. It’s a new engineering challenge, and I think it’s an exciting shift for the industry.
As engineers take on carbon requirements as part of EV development, what changes most in how they approach the engineering process?
Engineers don’t need to become sustainability experts, but sustainability will continue to become part of our day-to-day work. Rather than knowing every material down to the science or understanding the full supply chain, we can rely on experts for that.
What we do need to take responsibility for is asking whether the decisions we make in the design will help down the road and how they’ll have an impact later on. By understanding the customer or industry requirements, we can establish a baseline. From there, we can choose the materials and design methods that help move sustainability forward.
Filed Under: Featured Contributions, Q&As