Steelmakers Are Fighting Off Aluminum And Carbon Fiber By Going Lighter

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Aluminum and carbon fiber used to restricted to high-end cars, but the materials have trickled down to trucks such as the Ford F-150 along with GMC Sierra.

Bloomberg notes the shift to aluminum and carbon fiber was driven by increasing fuel economy standards and the desire to make cars lighter. This has pushed down demand for steel in the automotive sector and also the publication spoke to analyst Akihito Fujita who believes steel will only accounts for 62% of the weight of a typical new vehicle in 2025 — from 70% in 2015.

This can be bad news for steelmakers as some are greatly reliant on the automotive industry. Consequently, theyrsquo;re battling with building methods that are new and steels.

Specifically, Bloomberg emphasized Nippon Steel which revealed its NSafe Auto thought. Billed as a “classic automotive concept that is structural ,” the structure. Some of this steel was considerably stronger than what is typically utilized in cars, but this allowed Nippon to save weight in other regions. Because of this strategy, the notion was approximately 30 percent lighter than a traditional steel vehicle and this put it on level with the aluminum bodied model.

There’s no word on if the NSafe strategy would be cheaper than going with aluminum or carbon fiber, but Nippon Steel is also experimenting with other methods of making steel lighter. One entails mixing steel with &ldquo amounts of plastics,&rdquo.

It remains unclear if the new stuff and methods will gradually make their way to future cars, but it’so possible as automakers continue to search for methods to cut costs and lighten their automobiles.

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