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Nowadays, OEM’s challenge is to harmonize vehicle’s performance, design and cost. Furthermore, all of these antagonistic key performance factors must be integrated in a much faster pace than ever before in the automotive industry. Thinner parts and low cost materials Body-in-White (BIW) systems struggles to deliver the same/higher performance and quality levels as the previous generations. On top of that, considering that BIW structures typifies almost 30% in a vehicle mass, and almost 40% of a vehicle cost, focusing in this system, this paper will study the body upper structure, more specifically its roof panels. Currently, almost all small vehicles are composed by three to four roof bows (figure 1) within its structure. A Roof Bow is a sheet metal part, usually spot welded to the BIW inner frame, forming the inner structure of the vehicle body. Its primary function is to supporting the roof panel loads, such as Oil Canning and local stiffness.

Global automotive companies have heavily invested in the vehicle development in order to provide higher energy efficiency performance to meet the new regulations, and to obtain tax incentives offered by the INOVAR AUTO PROGRAM. One way to improve the vehicle energy efficiency is reducing it mass or apply an optimization. The Body in White (BIW) optimization can be achieved applying aluminum parts, considering the aluminum is a lighter material than the steel, and the BIW is responsible for a significant percentage of the total mass of a vehicle. The Brazilian market to apply the aluminum in the car will face a great challenge, regarding the high vehicle production using aluminum parts. The main challenges are raw materials suppliers to meet the potential demand, the connections between aluminum parts and metal parts, material cost, manufacturing cost, reparability, skilled specialists, etc.

The increase in crash tests done for independent entities of consumer protection, such as the Euro NCAP (Europe) or IIHS (United States) have shown increasingly importance for safety regarding the occupant protection. The consumer of the automotive market in developed countries, as United States or countries of European Union for example, they seek for a safer vehicle when buying a new one. On the other hand in Brazil, the consumer does not have the culture of buying a vehicle thinking in safety performance, but they choose the cars because of body style and accessories. The regulation of the Brazilian government's obligation to Air Bag and ABS brakes for all vehicles produced in the country from January 2014 and the INOVAR AUTO program, aims to bring more safety to vehicles produced in the country.

INOVAR-Auto program is a Brazilian government program to encourage innovation and improvement of the productive chain that aims stimulating investments in domestic auto industry providing tax benefits. However, to qualify for the incentive applicants the OEM's must meet several requirements and attend some vehicle performance targets. The body in white is an item that's directly linked to performance in terms of energy efficiency, so it's necessary lighter and stiffer bodies development comparing with the current ones. There is a lot of manufacturing process which may be applied in BIW construction, however some are more competitive considering present Brazilian automotive scenario. Considering this point, this paper will address two important forming processes that will be crucial to mass reduction and stiffness improvement in BIW: hydroforming and hot stamping. These process has a substantial utilization in USA and Europe, although are poorly used and exploited in Brazil.