Due to the development of electric vehicles, air pollution, material recycling and many other problems, aluminum substitution is becoming one of the solutions for automobile lightweight. Automobile lightweight will make aluminum alloy more widely used in vehicles. Automotive aluminum will be an important development direction of Changlu in the future. At present, automotive aluminum accounts for 40% of its business, which will be far more than that in the future.
Aluminum electric vehicles are most promising
In North America, aluminum substitution has taken the lead in the world, and has begun to popularize high-volume production vehicles. If Tesla ModelS uses all aluminum body design, it is still the game of the rich. At the Detroit Auto Show, Ford released the 2015 F-150 model, which sounded the horn of the popularization of all aluminum materials.
The F-150 is the world's first high-volume production vehicle with an all aluminum body. After the all aluminum body is used, the weight of the whole vehicle will be reduced by 317kg, and the fuel economy is expected to increase by 15%~20%. It is reported that the F-150 is a classic pickup truck owned by Ford, ranking first among the top ten best-selling cars in the United States for many years. The F-150 is a mid tier model with a price of about $30000 in North America. Ford F-150 adopts an all aluminum body, which marks the beginning of large-scale use of aluminum alloy materials by traditional automobile manufacturers, and the all aluminum body has begun to be popularized to mid end vehicles.
At present, electric vehicles are the most promising to be popularized. In the case of the same endurance mileage, since the weight of the battery carried by the aluminum electric vehicle is less than that of the steel electric vehicle, the battery capacity required by the aluminum body is less than that of the steel body. Although the cost of all aluminum body is relatively high, the all aluminum electric vehicle has price advantage due to saving battery cost.
If aluminum alloy is completely replaced, higher requirements will be put forward for the structural design of vehicle parts and the overall safety design of vehicle; At the same time, the original welding production line of the manufacturer will be completely transformed, and these problems are system engineering problems. The extensive use of aluminum alloy may be more suitable for medium and high-end models of the new production line.
