Advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) are now used for nearly every new vehicle design. AHSS make up as much as 60% of today’s vehicles body structures making lighter, optimised vehicle designs that enhance safety and improve fuel efficiency.

New grades of Advanced High-Strength Steels enable carmakers to reduce vehicle component weight by 25-39% and total vehicle weight by 8-10% compared to conventional steel. When applied to a typical five-passenger family car, the overall weight of the vehicle is reduced by 100-150 kg, which corresponds to a lifetime saving of 2-3 tonnes of greenhouse gases over the vehicle’s total life cycle. This saving in emissions can be more than the total amount of CO2 emitted during the production of all the steel in the vehicle.

WorldAutoSteel, worldsteel’s automotive group, completed a three-year programme in 2013 that delivers fully engineered, steel intensive designs for electric vehicles. Known as the FutureSteelVehicle (FSV), the project features steel body structure designs that reduce the mass of the body-in-weight to 188 kg and reduce total life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by almost 70%. The FSV study commenced in 2007 and concentrates on solutions for cars that will be produced in 2015-2020. Today we are seeing the material portfolio developed through the FSV programme progressively being introduced into new products.