Aluminium will find it hard to make inroads into the mass volume car market despite its advantages over competing materials, delegates at a transport conference said, according to a Reuters report.
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The news agency noted that many top-range luxury cars use a large amount of aluminium but the bulk of the mass car market depends on steel for body parts and panels.
“The formidable stumbling block is the manufacturing costs,” Mark White, a manager at Jaguar Cars, reportedly said at the Moving Forward with Aluminium Conference, organised by the UK Aluminium Federation (ALFED).
Jaguar builds its XJ sedan and newly redesigned XK coupe/convertible bodies from aluminium. Among rivals, Audi uses it extensively in its top models (it was also used in the ill-fated entry-level A2) while BMW uses it in some models such as the front section of the 5-series. Jaguar’s fellow Premier Automotive Group company Land Rover also uses it in some models including the premium Range Rover line.
Reuters noted that steel, although heavier and not as easy to recycle, is much less expensive as aluminium prices, at just below IS$2,500 a tonne, remain near 17-1/2-year highs reached earlier this year.
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By GlobalData“When it (the price) falls to between one or up to two times the price of steel then it (aluminium) will grow into the mass volume market – not before,” White said in a presentation, according to Reuters.
Garel Rhys of the Cardiff University Business School reportedly said car parts made from aluminium were 20-50% more expensive than those manufactured from steel, but overall use of aluminium in the transport sector would grow as output of motor vehicles was on a steep upward curve.
Over the next 20 years, more vehicles would be manufactured than during the first 110 years of the car industry, he said, according to Reuters.
“Steel is still supreme in Europe, where the steel industry is very efficient,” he said.
But aluminium was starting to make inroads into the North American truck market, where journeys are longer, owner-operators are common and cost savings for a lighter vehicle feed through quickly.
“It is more useful to have an aluminium-based vehicle because it will pay over time. The last part for aluminium to conquer is the car body, but that is the most difficult,” Rhys said, according to the report.
