by MIKE BRESLIN
The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have proposed new rules to set stringent fuel and emissions requirements for vehicles for model years 2017 to 2025.
Further, the new proposed rules signal EPA’s interest in examining the entire lifecycle of a vehicle, including the environmental costs of initial production and ultimate end-of-life recycling. According to the rulemaking, the EPA seeks comment on studies and research regarding “the fuller range of health and environmental impacts of light duty vehicles” and on “life cycle impacts of future advanced technologies.” The new rules expand on existing standards requiring American-made cars and light trucks to average 34.5 mpg by 2016. In 2012, the Obama administration announced even stricter new vehicle fuel efficiency standards that require the U.S. auto fleet to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.
No question that newer, stronger and lighter vehicles will be incorporating greater quantities of lighter materials like aluminum, advanced high-strength steel (AHSS), carbon fiber, resins and plastic in the quest to meet these ever more stringent fuel economy and emission
standards.
The new Ford F-150 pickup truck is an example of the type of vehicles that will be coming to the local scrap yard. This model has been the country’s best-selling truck for 37 years and best-selling vehicle of any type for 32 years. The new F-150 is built with an increased use of high-strength steel and aluminum, which contributes to cutting off 700 pounds compared to the previous model. That’s a huge weight-loss and a major shift in the composition of materials.
Aluminum’s use in autos and commercial vehicles is accelerating because it offers a fast and relatively cost-effective way to increase performance, boost fuel economy and reduce emissions while improving durability. From mass-market vehicles like the Ford F-150 to luxury cars like Bentley, Tesla, Audi, Mercedes Benz and Land Rover, aluminum is increasingly being used by automakers because of its strength and environmental advantages. Even the 2015 Subaru Outback now has an aluminum hood.
According to a survey of automakers conducted by Ducker Worldwide, more than 75 percent of all new pickup trucks produced in North America will have aluminum bodies by 2025. The study reports that Ford, General Motors and Fiat-Chrysler will become the biggest users of aluminum sheet in the next decade. It also forecasts that the number of vehicles with complete aluminum body structures will reach 18 percent of North American production, from less than 1 percent today.
Meanwhile, another study conducted by Ducker Worldwide found that Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS) presently accounts for approximately 175 pounds per vehicle, but are projected to double by 2020 and nearly triple to 500 pounds per vehicle once the 54.5 mpg standard proposed in the rule is finalized.
To learn more about advanced high-strength steel, American Recycler spoke with Ron Krupitzer, vice president of the automotive market for the Steel Market Development Institute (SMDI). SMDI is a unit of American Iron and Steel Institute and promotes the use of steel by developing materials and applications for the automotive, construction and packaging industries.
“Advanced high-strength steel is a terminology we invented about 10 years ago to separate this current generation of high-strength steels from previous generations,” said Krupitzer. “The new AHSS have some alloy additions, but most of their added strength comes from heating and cooling. With the advanced high-strength steels we not only strengthened, but also increased formability simultaneously so this category is able to make more parts in higher-strengths and lighter weights.
“A lot of that strengthening went into making vehicles safer. We had many more crash tests in the 2002 to 2010 timeframe, but that together with better fuel economy requires more advanced high-strength steel. And so while you are looking at what happens when lightweight vehicles hit the scrap yard, we’ve already begun that trend in steels by replacing plain, or mild carbon steel with these high-strength steels and have been doing it steadily for about ten years. And we expect that will continue at least through 2025.
“AHSS is used just about everywhere in the vehicle, but the body is the biggest application right now. Over the last few years we’ve begun to introduce AHSS into chassis, frame and underbody applications. We’ve just seen a number of notifications by General Motors (GM) and Ford about their new frames on their pickup trucks using more AHSS. It’s starting to work into the underbody.
“Vehicles today are really multi-material. We use a lot of different materials. For example, cast aluminum has gradually replaced steel for engine blocks and heads so there has been a remarkable growth in light-weighting in power-trains. Now aluminum is also working its way into bodies, but at the same time it has competition from AHSS and magnesium and structural composites are also being considered. So I think there’s going to be a continuing battle for materials in the vehicle, mainly body parts, but also for closures like doors and hoods. They are targets for light-weighting because they are fairly heavy. We’re seeing studies of lightweight steel and aluminum doors being considered. But the lightweight AHSS solutions we have today are quite comparable to aluminum in terms of weight reduction. Manufacturers have to do some work in the stamping and assembly plants and they have to learn how to join AHSS, but most times they can use the same equipment they had used to make the heavier mild-steel vehicles. It’s a big advantage to companies, cost-wise, if they can stick with steel. Steel offers great solutions to light-weighting challenges, but the car companies just have to work a little bit harder to apply AHSS because they are challenging to form, weld and put together. But in the end the cost is much less than other materials like aluminum, magnesium or carbon fiber. Repair and insurance costs are also more affordable in steel vehicles than in cars and trucks manufactured with alternative materials. Alternative materials not only require retooling of manufacturing and auto body repair facilities, but also extensive re-training for employees.”
Krupitzer detailed a test case of a forged aluminum front, lower control arm that was being used by GM for mid-sized vehicles like the Malibu. For the study, a AHSS solution was used that weighed exactly the same as the aluminum part, but cost 34 percent less. The next year GM began replacing that forged aluminum part with lower cost AHSS. Because the strength of the steel was much higher, less steel was used in the part. “That way we achieve light-weighting with AHSS by using less steel because the sections are thinner, stronger and more durable,” Krupitzer added.
“So in the end we wind up with a vehicle that you have to buy less steel for. That’s one reason why the cost is lower. If you save 25 percent of the weight of a given part with AHSS, it may cost a little bit more per ton, but the cost is very small or in some cases no cost increase at all as with the lower control arm made with AHSS. It has better strength and almost always a lower cost than aluminum. Aluminum will cost two to three times more than what a part will cost made out of AHSS,” said Krupitzer.
“We’ve introduced these new steels effectively over the past 10 years and we haven’t affected the waste stream, or recycling one bit. Does that mean in the future that we won’t be changing steels so much that we have to pay attention to the recycling of vehicle bodies at end-of-life? We can’t say never, but right now we don’t see that as being an issue for 20 years or more. The grades we are using now are fully magnetic, they separate the same way as mild steel of the past and they can be used directly in the furnaces without changing the quality of the steel. Right now recyclers do not have to segregate AHSS from other steel,” Krupitzer concluded.
Joe Pickard, chief economist and director of commodities for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) weighed in on lightening of vehicles. “It’s been a challenging year for scrap metal recyclers, particularly so on the ferrous side. With respect to nonferrous, aluminum prices have held up better than most. We’re seeing higher Midwest transaction premiums to secure aluminum because of the business demand and due to logistical bottlenecks including getting trucks and getting containers moved. So that’s contributed to higher spot prices in the U.S.
“I think from an aluminum perspective, these are all good things in substitutions for lighter weight materials, to meet those café standards and other EPA requirements because you are looking at aluminum which is around $2,000 per ton today versus ferrous scrap at about $300 to $350 a ton. On a per unit basis, this has to be good news for scrap processors because they’ve seen a lot of the nonferrous being stripped out of the cars before it gets to the shredders. That’s been a trend for the last 10 years or so and I think it’s actually picking up over the past couple of years because people recognize the value.
“The steel industry and steel producers are trying to gain market share in the automotive sector by introducing lighter weight, high-strength steel alloys that compete favorably on a cost per pound basis with materials like aluminum. Any time there is a change in the recycling stream in terms of what commodities are coming through our industry has to adjust.
“It used to be that plastic in shredder fluff couldn’t be recycled, but in 2013 the EPA’s regulatory interpretation allowed the scrap industry to start processing the plastic in shredder residue and that’s one of the areas that has a lot of room to grow.” “Carbon fiber may present bigger problems for auto recyclers due to recyclability issues,” said Pickard.
Many plastic components can weigh 50 percent less than similar components made from other materials. That’s one reason why today’s average light vehicle contains 332 pounds of plastics and composites, 8.3 percent by weight.
Carbon fiber may be visiting the scrap yard, but not likely in the immediate future. The new 787 Boeing Dreamliner, for example, is made of 50 percent carbon fiber. Germany’s BMW has been using carbon fiber in some of its cars for more than 10 years, and next year, plans to begin selling its carbon fiber-bodied i3 and i8 models. Only a handful of other cars contain carbon fiber at this point, including the BMW M6, the Audi R8, the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 and the Ford GT.
Ten years ago, carbon fiber cost about $150 a pound. Today, it’s about $10 a pound. Industry analysts say that for carbon fiber to find its way into more than high-end cars and aircraft, the price will need to come down to a point below $5 per pound, even to compete with steel which costs less than a dollar a pound. Carbon fiber is also difficult to recycle. Boeing and BMW Group recently announced a partnership to develop less expensive production methods and focus on carbon fiber recycling both during production and at end of life.
For auto recyclers, receiving lighter vehicles with greater quantities of more valuable nonferrous metals may be a case of less is more in terms of profitability.
Published in the January 2015 Edition of American Recycler News
