Oct 26 2005
With petrol prices rocketing, there was some good news for car owners today with predictions that the next generation of cars will use less petrol to travel the same distance.
The savings are achieved by using super-strength aluminium alloys to replace more of the traditional heavier metal parts in cars – a trend that is gathering momentum with car manufacturers worldwide.
Alcoa of Australia Managing Director Wayne Osborn told 400 national and international alumina experts meeting in Perth today that aluminium – which is made from alumina – will play an increasingly critical role in reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and petrol consumption.
“It’s a simple equation,” Mr Osborn said. “The more aluminium you use in cars, the less they weigh, reducing fuel consumption. This in turn cuts exhaust emissions, creating a double benefit of reduced greenhouse emissions. The super strength of aluminium means there is also no reduction in vehicle safety.
“The sums are compelling. Using aluminium to cut a vehicle’s weight by 10% boosts its fuel economy by around 8%,” he said.
“Each kilogram of aluminium used to replace heavier metals in a car body cuts petrol consumption by around 8.5 litres and carbon dioxide emissions by 20kgs over the life of the car.”
Mr Osborn said the aluminium in many standard passenger cars had jumped from around 64 kilograms to about 130 kilograms per vehicle in the past decade – but there was still enormous potential for more aluminium content.
“Substituting aluminium for higher density traditional materials is already saving around 1,000 litres of petrol over the life of today's average passenger car or light truck – and if you double this to around 260 kilograms of aluminium it could bring this saving to over 2,000 litres of petrol per car.”
Mr Osborn said Alcoa was working closely with automotive designers around the world to achieve these benefits.
Only recently, for example, Ferrari had announced that the ‘all-aluminium’ design of its 612 Scaglietti had reduced that car’s weight by a whopping 40%. Alcoa is Ferrari’s technical partner and builder of the new aluminium chassis.
Other car manufacturers including Audi, Ford, BMW and others are also steadily increasing aluminium content.
“If the use of aluminium in the transportation industry continues to increase as projected, it will make the entire aluminium industry ‘greenhouse gas neutral’ by the year 2017,” he said.
“This means the greenhouse gas impacts of producing aluminium will be fully offset by the emissions saved from using aluminium in the transport industry. Aluminium is the only industry in the world able to make that claim.”
http://www.alcoa.com