Necessity is the mother of invention, and the obligation brought about by growing sustainability efforts are synthesising once-disparate areas of automotive production into a single holistic ecosystem. The impulse is towards convergence. The term ‘ecosystem’ is, far from being a platitude, an apt metaphor for a system where a change in one of its parts automatically affects the entire edifice. This is exactly what is unfolding in automotive production. As OEMs put their heads together to find sustainable solutions for automotive production, they are discovering that sustainable production is inseparable from circularity, and that the latter inevitably depends on aspects of design and engineering.