Steel and the green cars initiative in Europe

ESTEP, Bruxelles, European Union, Belgium
e-mail: jean-pierre.birat@estep.eu

Received: 9 October 2013
Accepted: 23 December 2013

Abstract

At the end of 2008 and in response to the economic crisis, the EU launched a Recovery Plan supported by technology initiatives, one of them being the European Green Car Initiative (EGCI) to help the car industry design next-generation passenger vehicles, which address fuel efficiency and carbon footprint issues at the level of the challenges of the 21st century. The European steel sector, which supplies material to the European car industry, which builds 1/3 of all passenger cars in the world, has launched an extensive, bold and imaginative series of projects to address lightweight design, cost, safety, sustainability, availability, recycling, electric applications and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which are the main technical topics, as steel retains an essential role in the design of these future green vehicles. Highlights of these are presented here, such as the development of new steel grades, either new advanced high-strength steels or low-loss steels for electric cores, the co-design of steel solutions with OEMs and the importance of LCA in vehicle conception.