Should a car last 100 years? Sportscar-maker Longbow reckons so

Imagine: a car that lasts 100 years. Not just preserved like a museum piece, but continuously upgraded, repaired, and remanufactured. Interiors refreshed, drivetrains swapped out, and the core shell and structure still doing its job decades later. A British Leyland special this is not.

The message from the sustainability bods to the car industry speaking at the FT’s Future of the Car summit is: build a car so it lives well, dies responsibly, and can be reborn without giving the planet another sucker punch.

Sustainability chief at Jaguar Land Rover, Andrea Debbane said: “You have to actually design with the end in mind.” Tailpipe emissions? These guys dabble in the dark arts that are Scope 3 emissions - those are the ones generated across the entire supply chain.

Automotive start-ups and established names are beginning to take this stuff seriously. Daniel Davey, boss of Longbow Motors, said: "Fundamentally, the design thinking should be 'how do I keep this car on the road for a hundred years?'"

He's building his fast electric cars with sustainable recycled aluminium, reckoning on a whopping 75 per cent saving in CO2 emissions by doing so.

The current, less-Earth-friendly approach is: new model, new lease, rinse and repeat. These guys argue that if carmakers design a vehicle to be modular, maintainable and endlessly recyclable, the paradigm shifts.

According to Debbane, manufacturers have to stop working in silos to achieve it though. “You need to work very collaboratively with your entire supply chain,” she said to an industry built on confidentiality and competition, where the proverbial tariff war is the topic du jour.

Debbane talks about 'going upstream' (IndustrySpeak for supply chain direction). How upstream? Way upstream, to where the materials, mining and crayons are – well before your brand new EV is even conceived.

If it all sounds a little bit leftfield, consider this: JLR has invested in a company trying to extract nickel from plants. Yup, really. This is from the carmaker responsible for the Land Rover Defender, and perhaps in the future, it won’t just be making electric cars, it’ll be making heirlooms.