LIGHTWEIGHTING
The battery carrier unit is 37% lighter than an equivalent benchmarked unit
LIGHTEN THE LOAD I
Thought given to material selection and component design has kept weight down on this new electric vehicle. Jon Lawson finds out how it was done
f you were tasked with designing a small autonomous vehicle perfectly suited to urban mobility, what material would you opt for
to ensure its lightness? Aluminium? Composite? How about steel? That’s the main construction
material of choice for the appropriately entitled Steel E-Motive autonomous ride-sharing concept electric vehicles (EVs) created by WorldAutoSteel, a consortium consisting of 18 industry firms. Intended to offer mobility as a
service for four passengers in the short wheelbase version, or up to six
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with the larger version, the machine is a response to increasing urbanisation and a desire to reduce pollution and save commuters money. George Coates, Technical Director
at WorldAutoSteel says, “Because steel has been around for so long in the auto industry some may feel it’s old-fashioned. Nothing could be further from the truth, we speak to OEMs and universities all the time and because the material now offers so many properties there is a resurgent interest.” So exactly how has the use of steel contributed to making this vehicle
light? Coates explains, “We have access to a portfolio of 64 different grades of advanced high-strength steel (AHSS) and we were able to use 12 different thicknesses of material for the vehicle. For some sections where we wanted extreme lightweighting we were able to go as thin as 0.5mm because of the very high strength properties. We are also using a variety of different fabrication processes, other than conventional stamping, so we are using roll forming, roll stamping, hydroforming and hot stamping, these processes allow the metal to be thinly produced very
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