And to meet all these objectives, new-age automotive materials play an important role. It is important to understand that India has always been a cost-sensitive market and though there is no doubt that it is steadily moving towards being a value-sensitive market, cost continues to be an important criterion towards selection of automotive materials for manufacturing. However, it is important to understand that cost alone is not driving the use of newer raw materials for production of automotive components.
The need to leverage alternate automotive materials has been necessitated by increasing regulatory-mandated changes. The automotive industry has been witnessing a steady adoption of sustainable materials in the construction of various components of vehicles such as body-in-white, chassis, body panels, tyres, wheels, interiors panels, seats and windows. And the objective behind developing futuristic automotive materials has been majorly driven by the focus on bringing about cost reduction of the raw material. Besides the focus on trimming down raw material cost, the larger goal of enabling new-age materials in the automotive space is to improve the total cost of ownership.
GLOBAL TRENDS
Globally, the automotive industry is witnessing a R&D focus on polymer compounds and composites. This increasing push for polymer compounds can be attributed to the fact that these materials have the capabilities to achieve emission reduction, lightweighting and structural rigidity that serve as key attributes for automotive material development. Further, aluminium is also emerging as a promising material, especially in the vehicle body.
This story is from the July 2020 edition of Auto Tech Review.
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This story is from the July 2020 edition of Auto Tech Review.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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