Aluminum Technologies Offer SUVs Safety and Fuel Economy, SAE World Congress Papers Confirm

DETROIT, March 5 -- Achieving weight reduction through greater aluminum use for a sport utility vehicle (SUV) creates a safe and more efficient vehicle, concluded two studies released this week at the SAE World Congress in Detroit. According to The Aluminum Association, Inc., this groundbreaking research and development comes at a crucial time when the focus for SUVs and other light trucks centers on improving overall vehicle safety while increasing fuel efficiency and dependability.

"All too often, reducing vehicle weight has been overlooked in the debate over trying to make SUVs and other light trucks more fuel efficient while also ensuring they meet or exceed all safety requirements. We applaud Ford Motor Company for leading the way to document aluminum's potential benefit to the SUV market," said Dr. Richard L. Klimisch, Vice President of The Aluminum Association, Inc.

Engineers at Ford Motor Company presented the SAE papers. One explored the design of an aluminum SUV frame while the other considered development of a unitized aluminum SUV body. Both papers demonstrated that major weight reductions could be successfully achieved while delivering equivalent performance to steel. They also confirmed that an aluminum SUV would meet various regulatory criteria.

"High-strength, yet low-weight aluminum allows automakers to maintain the size of SUVs for occupant safety, yet reduce their weight for better fuel economy and to make them more compatible with smaller cars in a crash. In particular, both aluminum designs -- body-on-frame and the unitized body -- would achieve better SUV fuel economy without sacrificing safety," added Klimisch.

The SUV aluminum frame technical paper, conducted as part of a joint government/industry research program assessed the capability of an aluminum frame to achieve equivalent performance to the 2002 4-Door Ford Explorer steel frame. The result was a 40 percent weight reduction for an aluminum truck frame that was equivalent in performance to the traditional steel frame.

The P2000S unitized SUV aluminum body structure technical paper was designed as part of an advanced research project to determine the feasibility of a high volume, lightweight SUV that would achieve performance targets of the newly emerging "City SUV" market -- a low profile SUV with all the safety, durability, NVH and other functional attributes of a light truck, while having the ride characteristics of a sedan. To evaluate real-world performance, Ford produced ten aluminum bodies-in-white, of which eight were turned into fully running SUVs. The study confirmed aluminum offered a 50 percent body structure weight reduction in comparison to similar sized body-on-frame production of principally steel SUVs.

"Consumers still demand big SUVs for safety and convenience -- but they would also like them to achieve higher fuel economy and lower emissions. Using advanced aluminum design and technologies can give them both. As Ford and other automakers continue to seek new ways to design safe, environmentally-friendly vehicles -- especially SUVs and other light trucks -- aluminum should continue to be the fastest growing material in the automotive arena," concluded Klimisch.

The Aluminum Association, based in Washington, D.C. with offices in Southfield, Mich., represents primary producers of aluminum, recyclers and producers of semi-fabricated products. Member companies operate almost 200 plants in the United States and many conduct business worldwide. To learn more about automotive aluminum applications and attributes, please visit www.autoaluminum.org .