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All over the world, there are currently many advanced vehicle technology development efforts underway to improve fuel economy or exploit alternative fuel sources. These efforts range from reduced mass body structures to advanced powertrain architectures. In additional to the technical and performance hurdles, these efforts also face economic obstacles if they are ever to compete with and replace conventional vehicle concepts. As far as the manufacturing economics for many advanced technologies are understood at all, most are likely to be more expensive than conventional vehicles in the near term. In order to intelligently invest in new technology development, the entire life cycle economic costs and benefits must be assessed so that the eventual return on investment, if one even exists, can be known. This paper addresses a methodology for comparing both the up front manufacturing costs and the operation life cycle costs for conventional and advanced vehicle technologies.

This paper will explore the extended impact of advanced body technologies in two ways; laterally, by potentially reducing the requirements of other vehicle systems and horizontally, in terms of the life cycle costs of operation. Variants of Steel, Aluminum, and polymer composite designs will be explored. Traditional cost model projections of direct manufacturing costs and mass will be compared with the impact of functional system interrelationships and vehicle performance in order to assess the total vehicle costs and benefits of alternative systems. This analytical approach can give material suppliers and automakers a framework for understanding the various cost tradeoffs in the use of alternative material systems for automotive bodies-in-white, in terms of total cost, mass, and fuel economy. Through this understanding, better decisions about how best to invest development resources can be made.