Lightweighting to improve off-highway emissions
- Magazine Feature Article
- 15OFHP10_03
- English
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.