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In the automotive industry, materials are evaluated on their relative costs and value-added potential. In order to achieve commercial success, a material must offer a favorable balance of performance advantages and economics relative to incumbent technologies. In the business development cycle, there is often a great deal of excitement surrounding a new material formulation believed to offer improved functionality. Unfortunately, few of these technologies continue on a promising substitution trend, either because of inherent manufacturing challenges, or other market factors such as economics of scale required for market-entry pricing. The average design to market investment for a vehicle platform is $2.5 - $3 billion, with daily costs exceeding $1 million. Given such cost penalties, it is exceedingly valuable for the developers to understand the existing and potential cost structures involved in material selection in order to make efficient, effective, and informed strategic decisions.

All over the world, there are currently many advanced vehicle technology development efforts underway to improve fuel economy or exploit alternative fuel sources. These efforts range from reduced mass body structures to advanced powertrain architectures. In additional to the technical and performance hurdles, these efforts also face economic obstacles if they are ever to compete with and replace conventional vehicle concepts. As far as the manufacturing economics for many advanced technologies are understood at all, most are likely to be more expensive than conventional vehicles in the near term. In order to intelligently invest in new technology development, the entire life cycle economic costs and benefits must be assessed so that the eventual return on investment, if one even exists, can be known. This paper addresses a methodology for comparing both the up front manufacturing costs and the operation life cycle costs for conventional and advanced vehicle technologies.

This paper will explore the extended impact of advanced body technologies in two ways; laterally, by potentially reducing the requirements of other vehicle systems and horizontally, in terms of the life cycle costs of operation. Variants of Steel, Aluminum, and polymer composite designs will be explored. Traditional cost model projections of direct manufacturing costs and mass will be compared with the impact of functional system interrelationships and vehicle performance in order to assess the total vehicle costs and benefits of alternative systems. This analytical approach can give material suppliers and automakers a framework for understanding the various cost tradeoffs in the use of alternative material systems for automotive bodies-in-white, in terms of total cost, mass, and fuel economy. Through this understanding, better decisions about how best to invest development resources can be made.

In order to achieve commercial success, alternative vehicle structures must offer a favorable balance of performance and economics. Whether for traditional or alternative powerplants, composite structures have the potential for significant weight savings, but to date have been limited to very low production volumes. Consumer demand requires that electric vehicles must have comparable range and acceleration relative to internal combustion engine vehicles. A major obstacle to this goal is the mass of batteries needed for this level of performance. As a result, electrical vehicle design strategies have aimed at significantly reducing the weight of vehicle structures. Examples include the aluminum intensive EV-1 from General motors and the composite bodied Sunrise from Solectria. This paper examines the development of a manufacturing strategy for a lightweight, all composite body-in-white.

The Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV), a collaborative government-industry R&D program, has laid out and initiated a plan for a “Supercar” with the following specifications: a fuel economy of 80 miles per gallon (2.9 liters/100 km), size comparable to a midsize, four door sedan, equivalent function in other performance areas, and cost commensurate with that of today's automobile. Together, the performance and cost goals are formidable to say the least. The PNGV projects that a 50% mass savings in the “body-in-white” (BIW) is a necessary contribution to meet the 80 mpg goal. The two most likely materials systems to meet the mass reduction goal are aluminum and carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites, neither of which are inexpensive relative to today's steel unibody.

Much attention has focused recently on the recycling of automobiles. Due to the value of their metallic content, automobiles are presently the most highly recycled product in the world. The problem is the remainder of material that is presently landfilled. Automotive shredder residue (ASR, or “fluff”) is made up of a number of materials including plastics, glass, fluids, and dirt. The presence of this mix presents both a problem and an opportunity for the automotive and recycling industries. In order to determine how best to recover the materials that make up ASR, it is first necessary to understand the costs incurred in the present automobile recycling infrastructure: dismantling, shredding/ferrous metal separation, non-ferrous metal separation, and landfilling. Through a technique called Technical Cost Modeling, the costs of the present process are simulated.

This paper explores a framework for simulating the lifecycle costs of an automotive component for alternative material systems. The front fender for a midsize sedan is chosen as a case study. The material systems under consideration include the following: stamped steel, stamped aluminum, compression molded SMC, injection molded thermoplastic, and reinforced reaction injection molded polyurethane (RRIM PUR). The lifecycle for the fender is defined to include manufacturing, operation, and post-use. Using a technique called Technical Cost Modeling, manufacturing costs including fabrication, assembly, and priming are simulated for a range of production volumes. Operation costs are calculated in two areas: fuel consumption and repair. Component weight is examined as it influences fuel consumption (and therefore cost) for varying scenarios of vehicle life and annual mileage. Repair costs are assessed for different collision speeds and directions.