Assessing the Fleet-wide Material Technology and Costs to Lightweight Vehicles

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The purpose of this study is to provide insight to the technology and cost to reduce vehicle weight for the U.S. fleet of light-duty vehicles. Considerable resources have been expended trying to estimate the lowest cost feasible for mass reduction of light-duty vehicles in the United States. However, the average baseline of today’s lightweighting technology in the U.S. fleet is largely unknown. This study collected automaker data on lightweighting technology from 9 companies, on 42 vehicles from 4 segments (MY 2015), representing 50% of the U.S. light-duty fleet. Insights on automakers material technology plans for 5-15% vehicle mass reduction was also sought. The survey data provided a comprehensive mix of vehicles used to set a baseline representative of the fleet. From automakers’ insights on future mass-reduction technologies, an estimate is developed as a representative lightweighting pathway. With a representative fleet baseline and standardized lightweighting pathway a more reliable cost curve can then be estimated.