Weight Reduction of Vehicles and Light Metals

Abstract

Weight reduction of vehicles (WRV) is a continuous challenge from the beginning of the vehicle history, however the purpose of WRV has been changing by social requirements. Recently automotive industry is facing with the global warming and the other environmental issues, so we are sharing a vast amount of R&D resources to improve the fuel economy. In this paper, the changes of the purpose of WRV and, the relation between fuel economy and WRV, are summarized. And also the current status of light metals usage and the future work for the related material issues, in particular the corrosion resistance, are briefly mentioned.