To build a sustainable future that supports resilient, low-carbon mobility, we believe every company, every brand, every person has a unique responsibility. At Dow, that means accelerating our commitment to climate protection, engineering safer materials, and enabling circularity.

For our MobilityScience™ team, that responsibility translates to strategic investments in the research, collaborations and innovations that will help create the next-generation of low-carbon transportation solutions.

While the possibilities are thrilling, we understand what you’re up against isn’t easy. OEMs need a materials partner that can help them decarbonize today across internal combustion engines, hybrids, and alternative power sources such as hydrogen fuel cells and electric vehicles (EVs), without compromising performance and safety.

We’re here to help you navigate the road ahead.  

  

Sustainable Solutions Throughout the Vehicle Lifecycle

To emerge as winners in the race to lower carbon mobility, OEMs are taking action across the entire lifecycle of a vehicle. Materials science and collaboration are powerful assets in navigating this transition. That’s why Dow’s MobilityScience™ platform was created – to provide a single point of expertise in materials science that covers the full spectrum of the mobility challenge while helping to enable the next generation of EVs and autonomous vehicles (AV).

Explore each stage using the tabs below.

Sustainability by Design

Our design principle is to use the least materials possible to achieve the highest performance possible. Collaborating with customers early in the design phase enables Dow MobilityScience™ experts to recommend and create tailored, lab-tested material solutions that unlock efficiencies in each phase of the vehicle’s life.

Optimal chemistry and material specifications – thoroughly tested in our labs – deliver a wide range of performance benefits to OEMs seeking to maximize sustainability in their designs.

Polyurethane-based solutions significantly improve the durability and energy efficiency of automobiles, trucks, aircraft and ships. Our MobilityScience™ team is committed to innovating new technologies and products for making this material even more valuable. In 2021, Dow announced a mass-balance approach to the production of new polyurethane solutions based on a circular feedstock sourced from a waste product of the mobility sector that replaces virgin fossil-fuel based feedstock. Our new SPECFLEX™ C and VORANOL™ C product ranges are initially being offered to the mobility sector in collaboration with leading automotive suppliers Adient and Autoneum.

Sustainability Page – Circular PU Car Interior

What are your most urgent sustainable performance design challenges?

  • Reducing the carbon footprint of your manufacturing processes or bill of materials?
  • Improving the energy efficiency of your vehicle systems?
  • Accelerating progress with your electric, connected, and autonomous transportation developments?
  • Maximizing comfort and safety in your vehicles?
  • Accelerating development of your electric and autonomous vehicles?
  • Engineering more reusable/recyclable/circular materials into your vehicles?
  • Enhancing the emotional appeal of your brand among consumers?
  • Improving reliability by optimizing electronics module joint design in combination with right adhesives? 
  • All of the above?

Let us know.

            

Electric car charging.

Hear from Dow Technical Director, John McKeen, on finding opportunites for increased sustinability at every phase of the vehicle lifescyle, starting with design.

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Jump into our interactive brochure to learn more about our collaboration design studios for NVH and sealing and under the hood applications.

            

Vehicle with led light

Jump into our interactive brochure to learn more about our collaboration design studios for NVH and sealing and under the hood applications.

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Jump into our interactive brochure to learn more about our collaboration design studios for NVH and sealing and under the hood applications.

            

Due to its significant greenhouse gas (GHG) impact, the global manufacturing sector bears a unique responsibility for pioneering progress in environmental stewardship. That’s why Dow helps customers reach their Scope 1 objectives with solutions that help to enable greater production efficiency and the use of less materials. We also help them achieve Scope 3 objectives using material options with a lower carbon footprint. Dow has doubled down on our own sustainability commitments, making significant investments in renewable energy to achieve our own Scope 2 goals. We understand the urgency and importance of this work to all our mobility sector partners and customers. 

Partners in Sustainability

Every day, Dow’s MobilityScience™ team is helping customers reduce their carbon-intensive processes and enable the carbon-saving power of remanufacturing through optimal design and material selection.

We also provide the data OEMs and tiers will need for traceability and transparency. Thanks to our Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) data trail, customers can benefit from the embedded sustainability of many of our materials. For instance, for applications like automotive weathersealing, our LCA indicates that NORDEL™ EPDM, produced using our advanced molecular catalyst, has a reduced carbon footprint in 3 ways:

What are your primary production challenges?

Car driving on a road surrounded by trees

Watch this recent webinar to learn how materials science can help OEMs and their suppliers.

Consistent Sustainable Performance

Everyday vehicle use is far and away the most carbon-intensive aspect of the mobility lifecycle, which is why OEMs are fundamentally shifting their focus to alternative solutions like electric or hydrogen mobility. Whether you’re prioritizing electric or improving fuel efficiency, Dow helps deliver everyday sustainability performance to OEMs for vehicles in countless ways.

What are your biggest use-phase sustainability challenges?

Explore the materials unlocking new levels of efficiency during the tens of millions of vehicle trips taken every single day.

            

vehicle on the road

Learn how we’re helping customers lower the environmental footprint of vehicles.

vehicle on the road

Learn how we’re helping customers lower the environmental footprint of vehicles.

The Circular Journey to a Sustainable Future

The mobility sector accounts for around 20% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. There is an urgent need to manage materials throughout our supply chains and production cycles wisely and efficiently.

At Dow, we’re engineering materials solutions for sustainable disassembly and exploring new technologies to create parts that can be reused, repaired or recycled.

The way forward isn’t a straight path; it’s circular. Our MobilityScience™ team is committed to working alongside customers and partners to unlock the full potential of materials science for a circular economy approach and navigate increasingly stringent government regulations around emissions and waste management.

The good news? Progress is already being made on many different mobility materials fronts.

Substantial volumes of polyolefins are being recycled and used in a variety of automotive parts, all of which meet OEM specifications. Reclaiming larger parts such as bumper fascia, interior trim and instrument panels remains a major challenge requiring innovative solutions. Catch up on the latest mobility circular economy developments with our review of talks at the 2021 SPE Automotive TPO Engineered Polyolefins Global Conference last October, including a virtual presentation by Dow’s Dr. Rich Helling.


Silicone sealant

Dow has been reprocessing and recycling actives since 2005, converting siloxane-rich byproducts back to a fluid state. The next step toward post-industrial and post-consumer recycling of silicones is the development of thermal treatment technology, where evaluation testing is currently ongoing. Dow has also initiated exploration of mechanical recycling of silicones with a goal of creating a final material that has an equal or lower carbon footprint and lower capital intensity than virgin siloxane production. This has become a reality for brand-new recyclable, silicone-based self- sealing tire solutions created in partnership with Bridgestone.

Get in on the action around circular silicones!

Collaboration is critical to making an impact.

MobilityScience™

Whatever your challenge, we want to hear from you! Dow MobilityScience™ is uniquely positioned to help you make the adequate chemistry and materials choice to accelerate development and navigate the ever-changing mobility landscape. Driven by imagination and expertise, innovation starts here.