Outlook

The automotive world is so complex that it's not easy to take stock of what's being done. What, then, can be said of the plan to anticipate future developments? Moreover, reading the forecasts made twenty years ago can only make us modest! For the long term, uncertainties are high, but we can assume that the switch to hydrogen or electric vehicles will modify the detail of plastic parts, but will probably have little impact on the overall share of plastics. On the other hand, insufficient attention to recycling could ultimately have a negative impact on employment, and in any case on the widespread use of plastics.

For shorter-term forecasts, we'll confine ourselves to general approaches that could contribute to new advances in plastics, and to developments that are probable because they have already been tested, at least on demonstration vehicles.