Composites to dominate automotive R&D for lightweighting: GALM

The automotive industry agrees almost unanimously that multi-material designs are the optimal route to low-weight vehicle architectures, yet the critical challenge still remains on how to reduce the cost and time of joining steel, aluminium and composites. The Global Automotive Lightweight Materials (GALM) team conducted an exclusive poll to find out more.

46% of industry professionals admitted the cost and time of multi-material joining is the biggest hindrance to further reducing vehicle weight. This compares to 29% who felt the design challenges of new materials was the largest barrier, 17% were concerned about the cost of material supply and just 8% decided the forming of components was the biggest wall to shaving more grams from the car.

OEMs and suppliers were also quizzed over their priorities for research and development over the next 3 years. 45% highlighted composites as the area of greatest potential for reducing vehicle weight compared to 30% for aluminium and 13% for magnesium. Intriguingly only 8% felt that ultra-light steel should remain a priority for further research over the next 3 years.

However despite this shift in research, the industry still believes that aluminium and steel will dominate the structure of their next vehicle designs. When asked what role carbon fibre composites will play in bodies currently starting the design process, only 13% said that such composites will make up over half of the body structure, the same percentage of people that are omitting carbon fibre composites from their designs completely. 46% have decided that composites will play a significant role within the structure, but still overshadowed by steel and aluminium in scale and 29% told the GALM team it will only be used for specific, small components.

In addition, industry participants were asked where they felt the vehicle lightweighting industry was most exciting right now and which mass produced vehicle announced within the last 2 years should be considered most innovative in regards to lightweight design?