Cost-Effectiveness of a Lightweight Design for 2017-2020: An Assessment of a Midsize Crossover Utility Vehicle

In response to more stringent greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards and increasing consumer demand for fuel efficient vehicles, automobile manufacturers have identified vehicle mass reduction as a leading strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving fuel economy. The potential for significant levels of mass reduction can only be understood using a full-vehicle analysis, partly because mass reduction in one vehicle system or part can enable additional reductions elsewhere. This paper describes a holistic approach in which the most cost-effective mass reduction ideas were selected using a structured optimization procedure, and the crash safety of the resultant design was evaluated using a full-vehicle engineering analysis.

The results of this study indicate that when mass reduction strategies are considered using a full-vehicle approach, significant mass reduction can be achieved with overall cost savings while maintaining safety and without requiring the adoption of unproven technologies. For a 2010 midsize crossover utility vehicle (CUV), a 312kg mass reduction (18.3 percent of 1711kg) was found to result in direct manufacturing cost savings of $148 per vehicle, or $0.47 per kilogram. When the increased tooling costs of $23M are included, the net savings are $0.43 per kilogram. CAE model comparison and analyses were performed on the baseline and mass reduced models to demonstrate that crash worthiness would not be degraded.