Ricardo works with Detroit Materials to commercialise next-gen automotive materials

Ricardo Strategic Consulting, the global management consulting subsidiary of Ricardo plc that offers a comprehensive portfolio of high added-value, technology-focused management consulting services, is providing expert support to Detroit Materials, Inc. to bring its innovative ultra-high strength materials to the automotive industry, thus enabling structural lightweighting initiatives for the automotive, truck and transportation sectors.

Detroit Materials is a start-up firm focused on the commercialisation of ultra-high performance structural materials, something for which it was recognized at last month’s SAE World Congress where it announced as winner of the 7th Annual Global Automotive Innovation Challenge for its ultra-high strength castable low-alloy steel to support vehicle lightweighting initiatives. The market interest for affordable lightweighting of vehicle structures is high, due to both light duty fuel economy mandates and forthcoming freight efficiency rules for medium and heavy duty trucks.

Detroit Materials has developed the strongest castable low-alloy steel in the market. This advanced steel offers a combination of strength, toughness, hardness and elongation that is currently only available using highly alloyed and costly exotic steels. The company’s nano-structured ultrahigh strength steel provides the ability to produce thin walled castings for demanding applications, offering the best-in-class performance per dollar as compared to titanium, aluminium, ultra-high strength steel, carbon fibre and other emerging advanced high strength steels. The material has the potential to support a variety of lightweight structural applications in the passenger vehicle, truck, defence, off-highway, and transportation industries.

With the support of Ricardo Strategic Consulting, Detroit Materials will initially focus on lower barrier to entry markets, such as chassis brackets for the Class 8 truck market, where the cast steel offers up to 58 percent weight savings – translated to the entire US Class 8 fleet this would deliver a potential fuel savings of over 80 million gallons (303 million litres) of diesel per year. As Class 8 trucks account for approximately 15 percent of transportation energy consumption, this curb vehicle weight improvement will provide a potential savings per vehicle of over 1,500 gallons (5,678 litres) of fuel and 18 tons (US) (16.3 tonnes) of CO2e annually.

This technology will support manufacturers’ immediate needs to meet 2017 GHG emission and fuel consumption standards for heavy- and medium-duty vehicles.

Ricardo Strategic Consulting says it is working with Detroit Materials to assess market opportunities and best entry points based on the cast steel’s competitive position. Detroit Materials and Ricardo are also collaborating on an assessment of automotive component manufacturing costs to identify and resolve market entry barriers for new suppliers to low and high annual volume vehicles.