In the USA, Ford is making its 2015 model F-150 pick-up
truck not with a steel body, but with one made from aluminum – a move that
could have massive implications for the metal's usage.
It was news that will have passed many people by, but for
anyone with a stake in the aluminum industry it was a huge, market-changing,
earth-shattering development: Ford is making its 2015 model F-150 pick-up truck
with aluminum bodywork.
It is not the first aluminum-intensive vehicle to reach the
market. The light-weighting benefits of aluminum have already been showcased in
cars such as the Audi A8, with its aluminum frame, and the Jaguar XJ, built
with an aluminum sheet-intensive monocoque body.
But the Audi A8 is a luxury sedan car of which only about
12,000 were sold last year in Europe and the USA. The XJ is another luxury
vehicle, with less than 8,000 units sold in those markets last year.
The Ford F-150, on the other hand, has been the
biggest-selling car of any kind in the US market for the past 32 years. Ford's
F-series pick-up trucks sold more than 760,000 units in 2013.
"The real revolutionary change that's happening is that
aluminum is now moving into high-volume cars," Alcoa CEO Klaus Kleinfeld
said in a recent interview at the Yale school of management.
"It's been an accepted, well-working solution for
high-end cars for a while. But what we're seeing now is a broad-based
transformation from steel to aluminum [in the autos industry]."
Aluminum producers are now predicting that aluminum’s usage
in autos will double in just a few years - and it's not just the producers.
"Their numbers are accurate - aluminum sales will more
than double in the auto industry over the next few years," industry
consultant Mark Bodner said. "Steel cannot catch up with the pace of
substitution."
But, why now? Aluminum producers have been extolling its lightweight,
ultra-recyclable, no-rust virtues for decades, and yet steel has maintained
dominance in car manufacturing.
Kleinfeld pointed to regulations governing fuel consumption
levels, as well as rising fuel prices changing attitudes towards more
fuel-efficient cars within each class of vehicle.
Aluminum-intensive vehicles cost more to produce than steel
cars, but are cheaper to run because of their greater fuel-efficiency, thanks
to their lighter weight. As fuel prices rise, the benefits of aluminum come
into sharper focus.
"More than 80% of consumers are now willing to pay up
for a more fuel-efficient car," Kleinfeld said. "[A consumer] wants,
in the segment of large pick-up trucks, the most fuel-efficient pick-up truck.
That's what's changing."
But there is a third reason - the development of new aluminum
technologies that raise the performance of the metal against steel in areas
other than its main strength of light-weighting.
Innovation in alloys
The growth of pure downstream aluminum producers such as
Novelis and Sapa has led to a spate of alloying innovation, as companies seek
to position themselves as solution providers to their customers.
"These downstream companies diversified their
suppliers, and research and development was focused on products, not processes,
and customer service improved dramatically," Constellium CEO Pierre
Vareille said at a recent Metal Bulletin conference on aluminum alloys and
their applications.
"All large, downstream companies, whether integrated or
not, are now developing their own proprietary alloys," Veraille added.
"These developments are triggered by customer demand. Co-operation with
customers is the key to developing new alloys."
In the past, aluminum in cars has been mostly confined to
cast parts and extrusions, and mainly toward the high end of the autos
spectrum. The emergence of new aluminum sheet alloys is now translating to
growth in car body panels too, and to lower-end cars.
And if the aluminum industry itself had had the chance to
hand-pick the one vehicle to be the poster boy for the growth of the light
metal in the autos market, the Ford F-150 may well have been it.
"If I was an aluminum producer, I would make sure I was
all over this one, and I would make sure it was a success," Kevin Moore,
president of All Raw Materials Consulting, said at the recent annual meeting of
the Aluminum Extruders Council in Miami. "If it does succeed, at this
price range, there will be a lot of copycats."
The average amount of aluminum per vehicle will jump to
550-650lb by 2025 from 364lb in 2012, Moore said, adding that aluminum sheet
will see the lion's share of that growth.
And all the major producers have been preparing for that.
Norsk Hydro, Alcoa, Novelis and Constellium are just some of the names that
have expanded or are expanding their auto sheet and parts production, and most
have plans to further increase capacity.
But the demand comfortably beats the announced increases in
supply. Alcoa announced an expansion at its Tennessee operations even before
the completion of its $300 million expansion in Davenport, Iowa. All but a
fraction of the future output of both expansions has already been committed to
customers, an Alcoa spokesperson said.
Changing perceptions
There are obstacles still, but none that are not
diminishing. Aluminum’s lightweight has historically meant that people
perceived it as substantially weaker than steel and thus less safe. But
innovations, and the subsequent use of aluminum alloys in such demanding
applications as space travel and the military are changing those perceptions.
"Space travel would be impossible without aluminum. The
defense industry would not be where it is today were it not for high-impact
blast shields [made of aluminum] that have saved hundreds of soldiers'
lives," Kleinfeld said. "These are the arguments that consumers will
see and are seeing."
Now that Ford has brought aluminum intensity to its
biggest-selling car, other companies are following suit just as Moore predicted.
General Motors, under pressure from US federal fuel efficiency standards as
well as its competitor, has said it will produce an aluminum-bodied pick-up
truck by late 2018.
As the major auto manufacturers move into high-volume aluminum
cars and the aluminum producers increase their output of high-performing alloys
to cater to them, 2014 will mark the beginning of a dramatic growth in aluminum
usage in automotive that will certainly come at the expense of steel.
Source - Metal Bulletin
