There is a common assumption in the automotive industry that sustainability is essentially an energy problem. Swap the internal combustion engine for a battery, electrify the drivetrain and the car’s environmental credentials are pretty much taken care of. LIUXa Spanish startup founded in 2021, believes this is wrong.
Their first production vehicle, the LARGEmakes the argument in physical form: with a body made largely from organically sourced linen materials, a weight of less than 600kg and a carbon footprint that the company claims is 40% lower than a conventional EV. Launching in Europe for under €18,000, it’s a small, two-seater compact city car and one of the most radical propositions in sustainable car design in years.
BIG © LIUX
Composite flax fiber © LIUX
BIG © LIUX
Details © LIUX
BIG © LIUX
Interiors © LIUX
The structure of BIG © LIUX
BIG © LIUX
The basic understanding of the founders is that weight is the real enemy. The auto industry’s response to electrification has largely been to add mass: bigger batteries, heavier platforms, more boost. However, for LIUX co-founder David Sancho Domingo, the solution was to take the opposite path, concentrating mass only where physics required it. In the BIG, the weight is concentrated in the crash structures, battery and drivetrain, all low, and the result is an upper body structure that weighs just 45kg.
This structure is made of flax fiber composite material. Flax is the same plant from which we make linen fabric, and it turns out that it has excellent properties as a structural material in a similar way to carbon fiber. It is a crop that naturally sequesters CO2 during development, while carbon fibers, in contrast, require energy-intensive production and are currently not recyclable. The company has partnered with Taiwanese materials company Swancor to use EzCiclo thermoset resin, a bio-based binder with a patented recycling process, to develop the flax fiber composite structure.
Using a solvolysis process, car parts made from this material can be completely decomposed, separating the resin and fibers cleanly, without creating waste liquids or exhaust gases. Recycled flax fiber can be made into yarn and recovered resin can be returned to production after adjustment. This is a significant improvement over landfill or incineration, it is a closed loop, at least in principle, for the material that makes up most of the car’s exterior.
The company was specifically founded around the idea of creating more sustainable solutions in the automotive industry, and BIG is, in a sense, a thesis statement for how cars should be designed. The biological material represents a 61% CO reduction2 emissions compared to an equivalent steel body and a 40% weight reduction. The seats and plastic parts use recycled materials, the battery architecture is modular and removable, as it can not only be replaced, but also upgraded as battery technologies improve. This is a feature that extends the useful life of the vehicle rather than designing it for obsolescence.
There are, of course, caveats to this viable dream. The BIG is an L7e vehicle, meaning it is electronically limited to 90 km/h, which is classified as a heavy four-wheeler, not a full passenger car. Its safety standards are also regulated differently, especially for linen composite, as the L7e crash requirements are much less stringent than normal automotive standards.
If LIUX whether it can be executed at scale remains to be seen, as the European market is under pressure from low-cost Chinese competition. However, BIG is a cleverly useful challenge, showing the many different ways in which cars can actually be made more sustainably, and how the important automotive industry companies ignore these possibilities.
