Made from Air: The Twelve x Mercedes-Benz Pilot That Turned CO2 into Car Parts
- Catalyst
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
In early 2020 Mercedes-Benz launched a groundbreaking pilot with Twelve to make car parts from CO2, and explore how CO2Made® materials can transform the automotive industry.
In early 2020, at Startup Autobahn, Mercedes-Benz teamed up with Twelve on an idea that sounded almost impossible: what if captured CO2 could become a raw material for making cars?
On stage, Nicholas Flanders, CEO of Twelve, and Udo Gayer, Manager of New Business CO2 to Plastics at Mercedes-Benz, unveiled a pilot project designed to test exactly that—using Twelve’s carbon-transformation technology to turn CO2 into polymer building blocks for automotive components.
“This was the beginning of a new journey… you really can transform CO2 into products.” — Udo Gayer, Mercedes-Benz at Startup Autobahn 2020
Their focus: a single but symbolically significant part of a Mercedes—the C-pillar, the vertical support between a car’s rear window and trunk. It’s a small component with big implications for how the next generation of vehicles will be designed and built.
From Pilot to Polymer: The CO2Made® C-Pillar
The project quickly moved from concept to prototype. Together with materials manufacturer Trinseo, Twelve and Mercedes-Benz produced a polycarbonate C-pillar made with CO2-derived polymers. They also produced CO2-derived foam. This pilot demonstrated that CO2 can serve as a viable drop-in feedstock for existing automotive supply chains.
CO2Made® C-Pillar and foam for Twelve x Mercedes-Benz
The collaboration drew attention across Daimler and beyond. As Trellis reported, the partnership helped establish Twelve as one of the first companies to show that “waste carbon” can be reimagined as a premium ingredient for the world’s most advanced products.
The Material Shift
The average vehicle contains 150 to 300 kilograms of plastics—roughly 12 to 15 percent of its total mass (Plastics Europe Automotive Factsheet, 2024)—used in everything from interiors and insulation to bumpers and body panels. In electric vehicles, that number is only expected to rise as designers seek lighter materials to offset heavy batteries.
Electrification changed how cars are powered. Carbon transformation changes what they’re made of.
Polypropylene, polyurethane, and polyamides dominate automotive plastics, and nearly all are fossil-derived. Replace even a portion of that feedstock with CO2-based material, and the ripple effect across millions of vehicles is profound: a lighter carbon footprint, lower supply-chain emissions, and a pathway to truly circular manufacturing.
Chemistry x Culture: The Power of Carbon Transformation
The CO2Made® C-pillar marked more than a materials milestone—it became an early proof of concept for industrial decarbonization. Rather than reinventing the entire production process, Twelve’s technology integrates directly into existing manufacturing infrastructure, allowing automakers like Mercedes-Benz to decouple from oil without compromising design, quality or performance.
Decarbonization doesn’t have to disrupt—it can design better systems.
This approach reframes sustainability as a systems upgrade, not a sacrifice. It’s a story of evolution within the world’s most complex supply chains—where chemistry meets culture, and innovation becomes collaborative.
Scaling Carbon Transformation with AirPlant™
Five years later, Twelve has grown from a promising startup into a leader of the carbon-transformation movement. Its technology uses renewable energy to turn captured CO2 into the same critical hydrocarbons once sourced exclusively from oil—making everything from jet fuel to chemical building blocks for consumer goods.
Now, that vision is scaling into reality. In Moses Lake, Washington, construction is underway on AirPlant™ One, Twelve’s first commercial demonstration facility for producing e-fuels and E-Naphtha, the chemical feedstock for thousands of CO2Made® products. Designed to operate entirely on renewable electricity, AirPlant One is powered by one hundred percent hydropower and will demonstrate how carbon transformation can be industrialized at scale—turning captured CO2 into hydrocarbons, the building blocks of modern life, from aviation fuels to plastics and automotive components.
Twelve is building a new industrial logic: one where the materials that move the world are made from air, not oil.
This isn’t carbon capture—it’s carbon transformation. By turning emissions into essential products, Twelve is building a new industrial logic: one where the materials that move the world are made from air, not oil.
A New Standard for Innovation
Hundreds of kilograms of plastics per car translate into a massive opportunity for change. If every major automaker sourced even a fraction of those polymers from captured CO2, the impact would be measured not just in emissions reduced, but in industries reimagined.
And with AirPlant™ One now taking shape, that shift is moving from pilot to production—proof that collaboration can scale, and that industrial innovation can lead the way to a truly fossil-free supply chain.
