How will they reduce vehicle weight by 40 percent - E24

A group of Swedish component suppliers and colleges – with the Volvo at the helm – has looked at how to reduce the weight of future car.

They have taken a car in the magnitude of a Volvo V60 and examined how they can make it up to 40 percent lighter than the current version.

Environmental requirements

– New environmental standards is an important reason for doing this study. Future requirements will be much more frequent than today, and we must build cars that can satisfy them. Shall we do it just by building new, more efficient engines, it becomes too costly.

– The weight of the vehicle is an obvious saving potential, we can not ignore. Both new engines and lighter vehicles required to comply with the new requirements, said senior adviser for environmental strategy at Volvo, Axel Edh.

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Competitiveness

project, which has been named SåNätt, was started by SAAB, but in the autumn of 2011, Ford asked to assume their role by SAAB went bankrupt.

idea is to create new knowledge and improved the Swedish supplier industry on a new era where traditional materials would be less in demand.

comes first in goals with new ideas, new construction technologies and materials, to succeed in the years ahead.

Therefore, the project is not just about making today’s automotive easier, but thinking car all over again and see what can be run differently than today.

– With so much less weight we are talking about, one could imagine that it would jeopardize safety. It will of course not do. Future super lightweight cars should be at least as secure as today, says Edh.

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Six core

project has focused on six areas that have been identified as particularly important if one were able to reduce vehicle weights significantly.

They have seen seats, suspension, chassis, driver safety, doors and ceilings as well as the complete structures.

All groups in the project have identified solutions that save more than 40 percent by weight and that can be build around 2020.

solutions are put together in a data model which is around 40 percent lighter than the current V60. A significantly smaller and lighter engine is also an important part of this weight reduction.

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Materials and Interfaces

Edh says that lightweight materials such as aluminum, composites and slimmer high-strength steel has been central to the project. But it also has new construction technology and the interface between the components of the car.

As an example, is how one constructs from the people sitting in the car. Today they use the hip capsule as a reference point, the so-called hip reference point. The problem with that is that people have such different sizes that affect how the car can be built.

– We chose to go out of your eyes instead and it gave many implications for how we built the car. As an alternative to push the seat back and forth, we chose to adjust the pedal distance. It also provided a much more accurate distance to the airbag one. The seat is attached to a vertical structure and can easily be adapted to the person’s weight and height, says Edh.

When Ford will build the future of body they have considered a number of solutions. One of it is to use very thin sheets of double-walled high-strength steel and fill the space with foam.

– With this solution we can save around 100 pounds, says Edh.

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Cheaper

that automakers are looking for weight loss is not something new. The problem is that parts of lower weight costs more than the tongue.

Edh hope that one of the consequences of the project is that component suppliers have seen how they can build more easily without being more costly.

It is the first and foremost about the future light car will be realized.

Excitement

– project above all staked out a way forward for how to save weight and thus save fuel. But there is one thing that will be the consequence of this, namely driving pleasure. It’s much more fun to drive a light car than one that is heavy, says Edh.

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case was originally published on tu.no

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