The Advanced Materials and Technologies in the Next Generation Vehicles 2001-28-0020

Recent legislative and environmental pressures on the automotive industry to produce light-weight fuel-efficient vehicles with lower emissions have led to a requirement for traditional steel components to be replaced by advanced materials such as aluminium, magnesium and metal matrix composites. Those social pressures have also led to a claim for conventional vehicles to be replaced by the next generation vehicles (NGV) such as electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles and 3-litre car etc. This has led to a complete re-analysis of the design and manufacturing routes, with the emergence of advanced technologies as a viable process for the production of high volume, low cost, high integrity automotive components. In this paper the development and application of advanced materials and key technologies including the next generation vehicles will be described and discussed in terms of vehicle performance and cost effectiveness. The research activities described illustrates the benefits of tailoring of design, processing and materials suitable for EV, HEV, FCEV and 3-litre Car etc.