Editorial, Special Issue on ‘Hybrid cars and car recycling: Steps towards the clean car and the closed-loop of materials

With the surge in environmental concerns all over the world, in particular global warming and air pollution which are partly caused by automobile transportation, the issue of a clean car is today clearly on the top of the agenda. The media are disseminating the feeling that the hybrid technology is an obvious answer to such problems. During the last few years, another environmental issue – car recycling and End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs) management – became a hot area of confrontation between the car industry and policy makers. The Directive 2000/53/EC on ELVs, which has been adopted after a ten-years technical and policy debate, imposes ambitious targets of reuse/recycling/recovery to be achieved in the near future, ‘extended producer responsibility’ for carmakers, limitations for the use of certain materials, standards of ‘recyclability’ of new cars, and other provisions that involve design and product making. In order to avoid relying only on anecdotic events and propaganda pamphlets, there is an obvious need for academically based research on the economics and marketing of hybrid vehicles as well as on ELV-related technological and organisational innovation. It is the central objective of such special issue of the International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management. This special issue is a collection of six papers by academic experts of this industry, of which four on hybrid technologies and two on ELVs. All papers have been peer reviewed before being accepted