Posted on 18 Feb 2013
This counterintuitive move – the common belief has always been that steel is on the way out and aluminium is on the way in – has surprised many.
VW explains that the new high strength steels are six times stronger than conventional steels and helped take 100 pounds (45kg) of weight out of the new VW Golf.
While aluminium is lighter than conventional steel, it is three times
as expensive as the new steels , requires seven times as much energy to
produce from the ore (155MJ/kg) compared with the blast furnace – oxygen
steelmaking route (22MJ/kg) and on average generates 9.8tCO2eq/tAl
compared with an average of 1.959kgCO2eq/t for integrated steelmaking.
Hence, if CO2 emissions are measured in terms of the whole life of a
vehicle (manufacture plus use) rather than the simplistic tailpipe
emissions adopted by most legislators, using steel results in an overall
reduction of emissions.
However, the continuing battle between steel and aluminium is nowhere near over, but this is great news for the steel industry.