Novelis, the top aluminium supplier is of the view that growing automotive aluminium demand opens up new business for tier one automotive part suppliers while challenging them to get used to an aluminium dominant environment.  Ganesh Panneer, Novelis vice president and general manager of the automotive division spoke about this after the inauguration of company’s recent third-of-a-billion-dollar investment in automotive aluminium manufacturing.

The aluminium rolling and recycling leader promotes the use of aluminium in automotive from the sustainability standpoint as well as from a performance standpoint.  Since aluminium is recyclable, it can be put into a closed-loop recycling system. Aluminium makers like Novelis can take scrap back from the plants and also from auto OEMs and feed it again into their recycling systems.  From a performance standpoint, lighter vehicles have better driving performance with lesser fuel consumption and the weight savings can be transferred into payload capacity.

He highlighted a few key trends driving the growth of aluminium in automotive:

Bigger Vehicles:  while the vehicles get bigger, automakers must make advancements to keep them fuel efficient to keep pace with new higher fuel economy regulations set by the government. Aluminium comes handy in lightweighting a vehicle.

Heavier Vehicles:  Vehicles today are getting heavier because of electronic systems, entertainment systems, Standard ABS, peripheral vision systems, cameras etc. When accessories add extra weight, the automaker needs to take weight out from the body and engine components.

Electric Vehicles (EV): EV market is growing due to continuous pressure to shift from gasoline fuelled engines for environmental factors. To achieve a high range for an electric car within a given battery size and weight, the car needs to be lightweight.  That’s why most EVs are made of aluminium or a carbon fibre.  For the same battery cost, one can get more range in a lightweight car.

He projects the multi-material approach to dominate car body design in near future.  In this multi-material world, aluminium is going to be the predominant material for lightweighting supported by high-strength steel. In body-in-white applications, aluminium will have an advantage and 6000 series of alloys will be the highly demanded alloys for such applications.

Tier one automotive suppliers to original equipment manufacturers (OEM), especially body panel makers to, according to him have to get used to working with aluminium.  With the growth of aluminium applications in the auto industry, tier ones are customizing their stamping plants to process auto aluminium panels and parts. He also adds that Novelis, as an aluminium supplier, help tier ones come up the curve getting used to aluminium, with their technical expertise.