Cadillac used new ultra-high-strength steels to slash the weight of the 2013 ATS sedan.
General Motors will make an unspecified investment into a small start-up hoping to turn a low-tech material into a high-tech solution to one of the auto industry’s most challenging problems: making safer, higher-mileage vehicles without pricing them out of the reach of the average consumer.
With the industry facing tough new fuel economy standards even as government regulators continue to add new safety mandates, many industry observers have forecast that will require automakers to increasingly shift from steel to more advanced – but significantly more costly – alternatives, such as aluminum and carbon fiber.
Indeed, BMW is one of several manufacturers that has lately partnered with various carbon fiber ventures hoping to bring the cost of that exotic material down to a level tolerable in the mainstream automotive market. But GM Ventures LLC, the venture capital arm of General Motors, is instead putting its money down on Rhode Island-based NanoSteel, betting the firm’s new steel-making process will pose a serious challenge to the newer materials.
With just 34 employees, the firm is developing a new technique to carefully control the way the microscopic grains in a sheet of steel are aligned. It could be the next giant step in a series of improved steels that permit manufacturers to use thinner sheets of the metal to both trim weight and increase strength.
“Over the next several years, light-weighting of vehicles will be a major focus area to improve fuel economy,” said Jon Lauckner, GM’s Chief Technology Officer. “NanoSteel’s nano-structured alloys offer unique material characteristics that are not available today, making them a potential game changer.”
By 2016, the industry will have to deliver better than 34 miles per gallon for the average vehicle, and that will jump to 54 mpg under rules now being finalized in Washington. Complicating matters, new safety standards – such as recently revised rules covering vehicle rollovers – generally mean added weight. So does all the new hardware consumers are demanding, from advanced infotainment systems to heated, cooled and massaging seats.
Makers are trying to counter such trends by upgrading and often downsizing powertrains, adding more gears to transmissions, improving aerodynamics and switching to lower-friction tires. But cutting mass is considered a critical part of the solution – which is why there’s been a steady increase in the use of aluminum and why makers such as BMW are targeting carbon fiber as the next big thing in automotive materials.
Both are significantly more expensive than even the most high-tech steels, however, so much so in the case of carbon fiber that it has, until now, largely been limited for use in exotic vehicles like the Lamborghini Aventador. That price tag is expected to come down but GM is signaling its belief that newer forms of steel can remain competitive even then.
“The advanced grades are relatively new to vehicle design and are significantly different from the conventional steels they replace,” said Ron Krupitzer, of the American Iron and Steel Institute. “The lightweighting capability of AHSS (Advanced High-Strength Steels) results from their unique combination of strength and ductility. These attributes are developed by creating specific microstructures through precise and tightly controlled steelmaking processes. The results are lightweight automotive designs that are cost effective with low emissions that also provide unmatched safety performance.”
GM has already shown the potential for advanced steels with the introduction of its new Cadillac ATS compact luxury sedan. “Lightweighting” was a key goal for the product development team which turned to already available new steel processes to trim the weight of the vehicle to just 3,315 pounds, about 150 lbs lighter than the similarly sized BMW 3-Series and well under comparable GM products using more conventional steel.
One advantage with the ATS program was that engineers were able to eliminate the need for many traditional supporting brackets because of the added strength of the AHSS alloys they relied on.
GM Ventures joined EnterTech Capital, Fairhaven Capital Partners and five previous investors to complete NanoTech’s latest round of financing.
The start-up’s new steel process has a number of apparent advantages over other AHSS alloys – and alternative materials – in its ductility, its ability to be molded into complex shapes while maintaining its strength. Unlike some other high-strength steels, NanoSteel is “cold formable,” meaning it doesn’t have to be heated during stamping, a big plus in the automotive manufacturing process.
Both GM and the supplier believe they will eventually be able to shave “hundreds” of pounds of weight from the typical vehicle using the new material.