Weight Reduction Potential of Passenger Cars and Light Trucks by Material Substitution

This paper describes a study to evaluate the potential of weight reduction by material substitution for passenger cars and light trucks. Production vehicles considered to be optimally designed for a given functional size were selected as baseline vehicles for the study. Four alternative materials were used in the analysis: high strength steels, aluminum alloys, fiberglass reinforced plastics, and hybrid reinforced plastics. Applying equal stiffness as the structural requirement, weight savings by direct material substitution were computed for each baseline vehicle.