Second ReDriveS consortium meeting
Positive interim assessment of automated and digitalised circular economy solutions Second ReDriveS consortium meeting
On 23 and 24 June 2026, the consortium behind the ReDriveS research project (“Automated and digitalised circular economy solutions for electric axle drive systems”) met for the second time. The two-day project meeting was hosted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF in Darmstadt. Around five months after the official project launch, the 25 project partners from industry, SMEs and academia came together to assess the current progress of the project, present initial results and agree on the next steps in its development.
The meeting focused on progress within the individual work packages. The project teams presented milestones already achieved and demonstrators that underscore the project’s successful progress. Key results include:
- The presentation of a new concept for the digital ecosystem, featuring initial demonstrators of digital state models for component evaluation. Digital twins and a digital product passport lay the foundations for a cross-manufacturer circular economy for electric drive systems.
- Progress in the development of handling, dismantling and disassembly tools for the automated and, as far as possible, non-destructive dismantling of electric axle drive systems.
- New insights into the circular design of electric axles, with a view to incorporating disassembly, reuse and high-quality recycling into the product development process from the outset.
- Results from experimental investigations along the recycling chain: from mechanical shredding through material processing to the recycling of permanent magnets and critical raw materials.
In additional workshops, the interfaces between the work packages were further refined, key issues were addressed collaboratively, and the next development steps were agreed upon within the consortium.
A particular highlight of the meeting was the presentation of the results of the first mechanical processing trial involving more than 250 electric vehicle axles using a large-scale industrial shredding and processing plant. The aim was to obtain real material fractions and to assess which secondary raw materials can be recovered even without prior dismantling. At the same time, the trial highlights the limitations of current shredding technologies: In particular, the targeted recovery of rare-earth magnets can only be achieved through upstream, targeted dismantling of the axles. The results thus provide an important basis for the environmental and economic assessment of future recycling and dismantling pathways.
In addition to technical topics, the agenda also covered project management, public relations and further networking among the project partners. The consortium meeting thus provided an important platform for pooling insights, exploiting synergies and jointly preparing for the next milestones in the project’s implementation.
The outcomes of the meeting show that ReDriveS is progressing according to plan. The progress made in the first few months of the project lays an important foundation for the upcoming development phases and underlines the high value placed on interdisciplinary collaboration within the consortium.
ReDriveS is one of the national flagship projects within the specialist programme “The DNA of Sustainable Mobility – Digital, Sustainable, System-Capable” run by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE). Coordinated by Schaeffler AG, the collaborative project brings together 25 partners from industry, SMEs and academia. With a project budget of more than 25 million euros, the consortium is developing innovative solutions over a 36-month period for a sustainable, automated and digitally supported circular economy for electric axle drive systems. The focus is on automated dismantling processes, innovative recycling methods and the establishment of a digital ecosystem with digital twins to enable cross-manufacturer data sharing. The aim is to increase resource efficiency, keep strategic raw materials in the circular economy and make the value chains of electric mobility more resilient in the long term.
During the project meeting, FFT presented the results of the manual dismantling of electric axle drive systems. The findings form an important basis for the development of automated processes and the design of future plant concepts for the automated dismantling of electric axles. In addition, a workshop on the challenges and risks involved in dismantling rotors and stators was held jointly with the project partners involved in this work package. The findings are to be incorporated into the further development of flexible and sustainable dismantling strategies.
