Now, the student group TU/ecomotive at Eindhoven University in the Netherlands presents the car Eterna.
It’s a modular electric car where the idea is to always keep the bottom of the car alive, and instead, you only replace the upper body and interior when they are worn out. This way, they are a bit kinder to the environment and don’t need to scrap the entire car.
The team envisions leasing the car through a company that always ensures you have an updated car. Every five years, they update the upper part of the car with the latest technology and likely new design, and after 20 years, they replace the entire top part. The bottom remains as it is. However, the battery is located in it, and a lot is likely to have changed on that front during this time, so the exact plans there are a bit unclear.
In the Netherlands, on average, a car is scrapped after it’s 20 years old.