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The increasing demand for light weighting products due to introduction of various standards and norms for controlling CO2 emissions and to meet the customer requirement of low cost with higher strength and rigidity of product in automotive industry, sheet metal manufacturing technique is adopted for automotive steering yoke for light commercial vehicle. Currently forged yokes are used for higher strength requirement, while sheet metal yokes are being used for small tonnage vehicle. The attempt has been made to improve overall strength and rigidity of the yoke produced by sheet metal operation using SAPH 440 steel with 6.5mm thickness for light commercial vehicle segments. The major challenge identified for this development was developing such a high strength and thickness material with consistency of dimension during forming process and meeting the torsional strength requirement of 500 Nm.

Body in white (BIW) forms a major structure in any automobile. It is responsible for safety and structural rigidity of the vehicle. Also, this frame supports the power plant, auxiliary equipments and all body parts of the vehicle. When it comes to judging the performance of the vehicle, BIW is analyzed not only for its strength and shape but also the weight. Light weight BIW structures have grown rapidly in order to fulfill the requirements of the best vehicle performance in dynamic conditions. Since then lot of efforts have been put into computer-aided engineering (CAE), materials research, advanced manufacturing processes and joining methods. Each of them play a critical role in BIW functionality. Constructional designing, development of light materials with improved strength and special manufacturing practices for BIW are few research areas with scope of improvement. This paper attempts to review various factors studied for BIW weight reduction.