Technical analysis of the composition of an average European car: share of steel, aluminum, plastics, and hard-to-recover materials, with real data on reuse and recycling at end of life

Author: Marco Arezio. Expert in the circular economy, polymer recycling, and industrial processes for plastics. Founder of the rMIX platform, dedicated to enhancing the value of recycled materials and developing sustainable supply chains.

Date: April 13, 2026

Reading time: 11 minutes

The automobile is one of the most complex industrial objects in everyday life. It is often imagined as a fully recyclable product, almost as if it were one large block of metal ready to go back into the foundry. In reality, it is not that simple. A modern car is made from the combination of ferrous metals, aluminum, engineering plastics, copper, glass, rubber, paints, textiles, electronics and, increasingly, composite materials.

Precisely for this reason, when people talk about a “recycled car” or a “recyclable car,” they risk confusing three different levels: the recycled material content already present in the new vehicle, its theoretical design recyclability, and the real rate of reuse or recycling actually achieved when the vehicle reaches the end of its life. The European Commission in fact reminds us that the automotive sector is among the largest consumers of primary raw materials and that, despite good overall recovery rates from end-of-life vehicles, the industry still makes limited use of recycled materials, especially plastics.

The first point to clarify is that the categories “recycled,” “recyclable,” and “non-recyclable” are not three perfectly separate slices of the same object. A steel component, for example, may have been manufactured with a share of recycled scrap and, at the same time, still be recyclable at the end of its life.

To read the figures correctly, it is therefore useful to distinguish three different questions: how much secondary material has already been incorporated into the new car; how much of the vehicle is designed to be reusable, recyclable, or recoverable; and how much is actually brought back into circulation when the vehicle becomes waste. European legislation keeps precisely these dimensions separate: on the one hand, it sets requirements for reusability, recyclability, and recoverability at the design stage; on the other, it measures every year the actual results achieved for end-of-life vehicles treated in the Member States.

Which materials really dominate the weight of an average car

Looking at total mass, the average European car remains above all a metal object. In a typical EU passenger car, steel still accounts for around 800–900 kg, that is approximately 50–66% of the vehicle’s mass, depending on the segment, age, model, and powertrain. Aluminum, however, has gained ground significantly: a leading European study places the average aluminum content per vehicle at 205 kg in 2022.

Plastics, depending on the type of car and the measurement criterion, account on average for between 14% and 18% of total mass, or about 150–200 kg in an average vehicle, with some vehicles now reaching around 240 kg. The Commission’s Joint Research Centre also notes that more than 95% of a vehicle’s weight is concentrated in a limited number of key materials, which explains why recovery potential really does exist, but depends on the quality of separation and not only on theoretical composition.

In practical terms, this means that the core of the car is made up of steel, iron, aluminum, and copper, that is, materials that from a metallurgical point of view have a strong predisposition for recycling. Around this core, however, there is a growing layer of engineering plastics, foams, coatings, adhesives, resins, complex wiring, electronics, and multilayer combinations that make end-of-life treatment far less straightforward than is commonly believed. The industrial value of the end-of-life vehicle is concentrated mainly in the base metals; everything else, if not properly dismantled before shredding, tends to degrade in quality or end up in mixed streams that are difficult to valorize.

The role of steel in the structure of the modern automobile

Steel remains the dominant material because it makes it possible to combine mechanical strength, passive safety, structural stiffness, industrial formability, and relatively competitive costs. The European study on the automotive steel loop highlights that about 58% of the steel present in the car is concentrated in the bodywork and that much of this steel must meet very strict quality requirements, also in order to avoid contamination that would compromise the performance of flat steel products. This point is decisive: saying that steel is recyclable is correct, but not all metal scrap has the same value. The European Commission in fact stresses that overall material recovery rates are high, but the metal scrap obtained from end-of-life vehicles often still has quality that is too low for the more demanding applications of car-to-car recycling.

How much aluminum matters today in vehicle composition

Aluminum is the material that has benefited most from the push toward lightweighting and electrification. The European average figure of 205 kg per vehicle in 2022 shows that it is no longer a marginal material or one confined to a few premium components. Castings, extrusions, rolled products, and forgings are used in powertrains, subframes, body structures, closures, brakes, and above all in electrified vehicles, where mass reduction helps offset the weight of battery packs. Here too, however, real circularity depends on scrap quality and on the ability to separate alloys and contaminants effectively. In other words, aluminum is highly recyclable, but preserving its metallurgical value requires more selective supply chains than simple bulk recovery.

Automotive plastics: light, strategic, but still difficult to close the loop

Plastics are the most critical point in the entire discussion. On the one hand, they are indispensable for reducing vehicle weight, improving aerodynamics, comfort, insulation, design, functional integration, and compatibility with electrification. On the other hand, precisely because they are present in many polymer families, in coupled, painted, filled, foamed, or contaminated components, they are difficult to bring back into high-quality recycling. The European Commission points out that plastics represent 14–18% of the vehicle’s mass and that today only an average of about 3% of the plastic present in new vehicles comes from recycled plastic, although some more advanced models perform better. This is one of the clearest signs that the modern car is much further ahead in metal recyclability than in the stable incorporation of secondary polymers.

The problem is not only quantitative but also qualitative. The JRC highlights that many plastic and electronic fractions, if they are not dismantled and separated in a dedicated way, end up in a light shredder residue stream in which plastics are no longer recovered with the same effectiveness as metals. In the baseline cases analyzed, iron and aluminum are recovered well, while a significant share of plastics, boards, and other embedded materials is lost or incinerated. For this reason, automotive plastic is the real proving ground of automotive circularity: it is not enough to know that a polymer is “technically recyclable”; it must be identified, dismantled, separated, and reintroduced into an acceptable industrial specification.

How much recycled material is already present in a new car

Technical honesty is needed here: today there is still no single harmonized and universally declared figure that states what percentage by mass of a “new average European car” is made up of total recycled material. There are solid data for individual materials, but no single official figure for the entire vehicle. A prudent estimate can nevertheless be made. WorldAutoSteel indicates that automotive body steel contains about 25% recycled steel, while many internal iron and steel components use even higher percentages.

Considering that the ferrous fraction accounts for around 50–66% of the car’s mass, this part alone already carries with it a non-negligible share of recycled content. If we add that plastics, while representing 14–18%, incorporate on average only 3% recycled plastic, and that aluminum averages 205 kg per vehicle but still does not have a standardized EU declaration on its average recycled content in a new car, it can be concluded that the total share of recycled material in an average vehicle is plausibly on the order of at least 15–20% by mass, and often may be higher. This, however, is a prudent technical inference, not an official harmonized EU statistical figure.

Translated into industrial language, the part of the car that today already incorporates the most recycled material is above all the metal part. The part that remains more dependent on virgin material or on secondary streams that are difficult to certify and stabilize is that of polymers, foams, certain composites, and many applications with very strict aesthetic, odor, or safety requirements.

What European legislation provides for the recyclability of vehicles

At the design level, the basic rule in the EU is clear: vehicles must be built so as to be at least 85% reusable and/or recyclable by weight and at least 95% reusable and/or recoverable. This is a fundamental constraint, but it must be interpreted correctly. It does not mean that every car will then actually be recycled at 95%. It means that the vehicle’s design must be compatible with those levels of valorization, provided that adequate plants, dismantling procedures, secondary raw material markets, and economic conditions exist. The gap between theoretical possibility and real result is the crucial point of the entire system.

How much is really reused or recycled at end of life

The most recent real figures available at European level show that, in 2023, of the end-of-life vehicles treated in the EU, 88.3% by weight was reused or recycled, while 93.7% was reused or recovered. The difference between the two values is important: it means that part of the vehicle was not actually returned to material, but only recovered in another form, typically energy recovery. If the figure is translated directly, the final picture is very clear: about 88.3% comes back as reuse or recycling, about 5.4% is recovered but not recycled, and about 6.3% remains outside even recovery. Today, this is the most solid answer to the question of how much of a car is actually reused or recycled at end of life.

The figure is good, but not perfect. The 2023 EU aggregate stands above the 85% target for reuse + recycling, but below the 95% threshold for reuse + recovery when viewed as an overall average. Eurostat nonetheless points out that many countries individually exceed the targets, while others lag behind for logistical, storage, or reporting reasons. This confirms that real end-of-life performance depends not only on the soundness of design, but also on the maturity of the entire national chain of collection, treatment, export, dismantling, and post-shredding.

Where non-recyclable or poorly recyclable components are concentrated

The truly problematic share of the car does not coincide with a single material, but with a set of technical combinations. The main issue is shredder residue: a heterogeneous mixture in which plastics, rubber, foams, glass, textiles, and other low-density materials are found. The JRC describes this fraction precisely as a mixed stream in which many plastics from vehicles lose value or end up being incinerated. This is where much of the “non-recyclable” share lies, or more precisely, the share that is not efficiently recycled under current industrial conditions.

Moreover, the difficulties do not depend only on the chemical nature of the material, but also on how the component has been designed. Structural adhesives, plastic-metal combinations, filled or painted plastics, bonded textiles, integrated foams, embedded electronic components, and sensors dispersed in many parts of the vehicle reduce separability. For this reason, the non-recycled share should not be read as “material intrinsically impossible to recycle,” but as the result of three combined factors: construction complexity, contamination, and insufficient economic convenience of separation. The Commission itself acknowledges that only small quantities of plastic are currently recycled from end-of-life vehicles and that the quality of the scrap obtained is still often too low.

The real synthesis: how to read the three required categories

If one wants to answer simply but correctly the question “how is an average car composed in terms of recycled, recyclable, and non-recyclable materials?”, the most rigorous synthesis is this.

In the new car, a significant share of the mass is already made up of materials incorporating recycled matter, especially metals. A single EU figure does not yet exist, but a prudent estimate places this share at least in the order of 15–20% of the weight, with the possibility of higher values depending on materials and manufacturer.

From the standpoint of design recyclability, the vehicle must be conceived to reach at least 85% reuse/recycling and 95% reuse/recovery. This means that most of the vehicle’s mass belongs to families of materials that are recoverable at least in theory, above all metals, part of the glass, some plastics, and various dismantlable components.

From the standpoint of the real end-of-life result, EU 2023 data say that about 88.3% of the weight is actually reused or recycled, about 5.4% is only recovered, and about 6.3% does not even enter recovery. In other words, today the share that remains outside the true material loop is still close to a substantial tenth of the vehicle, and is concentrated above all in mixed fractions and in the components that are hardest to separate.

How cars will change under the new European rules

The political direction is now set. In 2023, the Commission had proposed that new vehicles should include at least 25% recycled plastic and that 30% of plastics from end-of-life vehicles should be recycled. In December 2025, Parliament and Council reached a provisional agreement providing for a gradual path: 15% recycled plastic in new vehicles six years after the rules enter into force and 25% after ten years, with part of this target to be met using recycled plastic coming from end-of-life vehicles. This is the clearest signal that the future challenge will not be played out so much in metal recovery, which is already relatively mature, as in the ability to truly close the loop for automotive polymers.

Conclusion

The average car is not a “completely recycled” product, but neither is it an irredeemably linear object. Rather, it is an industrial system that is still strongly metallic, where steel and aluminum ensure much of the overall recyclability, while plastics and mixed fractions remain the main bottleneck of circularity. Today, a new vehicle already incorporates a non-trivial share of recycled materials, but the truly virtuous component is above all the metal one. At end of life, in Europe, about 88.3% of the weight returns as reuse or recycling, but a share still ends up in energy recovery or outside the loop. It is there that the quality of the automotive sector’s circular transition will be measured in the coming years.

FAQ

How much of an average car is made of steel?

In the EU, a typical passenger car contains about 800–900 kg of steel, approximately 50–66% of the vehicle’s mass.

How much plastic is there in a modern car?

Plastics account on average for about 14–18% of the vehicle’s mass, or around 150–200 kg in an average car, with some models reaching around 240 kg.

How much recycled plastic is there in new cars today?

According to the European Commission, today on average only about 3% of the plastic present in new vehicles comes from recycled plastic.

How much of a car at end of life is actually reused or recycled?

In 2023, in the EU, 88.3% by weight of end-of-life vehicles was reused or recycled; 93.7% was reused or recovered.

Why has recycling not yet reached 100%?

Because a share of the vehicle ends up in mixed fractions that are difficult to separate, especially plastics, foams, textiles, rubber, embedded electronics, and shredder residues, which under current industrial conditions are not always recycled at sufficient quality.

Sources

European Commission, End-of-Life Vehicles and regulatory framework for end-of-life vehicles.

Eurostat, End-of-life vehicle statistics, EU 2023 data on reuse/recycling and reuse/recovery.

JRC, analyses of vehicle materials and the circularity of components.

European study on the automotive steel loop.

European Aluminium / Ducker Carlisle, Average Aluminum Content per Vehicle in 2022.

Plastics Europe and DG Environment on the share of plastics in cars and the low content of recycled plastic in new vehicles.

European Parliament and European Commission on future thresholds for recycled plastic content in vehicles.

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