Considerable progress has been made for the past ten years on various kinds of the materials used for auto-manufacturing particularly in Japan in order to comply with the, so-called “social needs”. For instance, there has been counter-measures for emission, safety regulations, safeguards, savings for energy, upgrading, etc.
Above all, in order to meet recent requirements towards weight saving, energetic efforts have been made by not only car-manufacturers but also other materials producers for the development of new substitute materials such as high strength steel sheets, aluminum alloys, plastic products and so forth.
Today, these newly developed materials are widely applied to every model of new automobiles.
However, the price increases of crude petroleum since the second petroleum crisis, have become a serious problem which affects. the cost-increase for aluminum alloys and petroleum chemical products. Accordingly, for the automobile industry facing such severe cost price problems, it will take a while to reconsider these materials.
We, the writers, will explain our technical and engineering comments on the recent tendency of iron and steel, light metals, sintered metals and plastics prevailing for Japanese cars.