Lightweighting to improve off-highway emissions

Where systems engineers can gain efficiencies in off-highway equipment is agnostic, they'll take it anywhere, and so they should, but one of the ways, often underestimated, is through the use of strong and lightweight advanced materials.

In many segments of the ground-vehicle industry, lightweighting is a hot topic, and yet the off-highway segment lags behind in terms of more eco-friendly vehicle design. However, legislative pressures are inspiring change.

Automobiles are thought to be responsible for around 12% of total EU emissions of CO₂, the main greenhouse gas. In response, EU legislation has set mandatory emissions reduction targets for new cars-by 2021, the fleet average of CO₂ to be achieved by all new cars is just 95 g/km, a reduction of 40% when compared with the 2007 fleet average; an engineering challenge not new to the off-highway industry.