Its unique panels can be reused without impacting style or safety
Every year, the beautiful gardens of Milan’s Museo Diocesano are turned into a hive of activity, with established brands and start-ups showcasing innovative and often environmentally-conscious products as part of Milan’s annual Design Week. One of this year’s clear highlights was Honda’s achingly cool Sustaina-C Concept.
First unveiled at the Japan Mobility Show earlier this year, where it wore a bold red and blue color scheme, the vehicle was back sporting a much more eye-catching look, while the Japanese brand was up for revealing more about the project. And we’ve now picked up some exclusive sketches of the concept, which you can see below.
The diminutive but decidedly cool EV boasts lines that are eerily similar to the now largely defunct Honda e, while a pint-sized Pocket Concept folding electric scooter neatly stashes away in the boot for last-mile transport needs. But it is not the powertrain or the folding scooter that are key takeaways, but the exterior panels that physically make up the vehicle.
Fashioned from recycled acrylic resin, itself sourced from second-hand taillights, the Sustaina-C concept is the first vehicle of its kind that is, theoretically, infinitely recyclable.
«The benefit of using acrylic resin, as opposed to typically recycled plastic, is that it is the only material we’ve found that can easily be returned to a virgin material,» Kento Ishii, Design Project Leader for the Sustaina-C at Honda, told us.
«Acrylic resin can be returned to a completely clear, colorless material time and time again without any degradation when it comes to the performance and physical look of the end product. We can also take donor material from a number of industries, it doesn’t just have to be old taillights,» he adds.Reducing the reliance on carbon
Kento Ishii is hot on sustainability, championing clothing and fashion brands that recycle and reuse fabrics to produce new items.
