Technical Paper
Not the Delorean Revisited: An Assessment of the Competitive Position of a Stainless Steel Body-in-White
1999-09-28
1999-01-3239
Autokinetics is a Rochester Hills MI design firm working with Armco, a supplier of stainless steel. Together, they have developed an architecture that replaces the traditional stamped and spot welded steel unibody with a novel stainless steel spaceframe architecture. Fabrication Rollformings Thin wall castings Progressive die stampings Plastic support and exterior panels Assembly - Spot, laser, and MIG welding Relative to conventional steel unibodies, the Autokinetics spaceframe architecture offers a number of projected advantages. Substantial mass reduction Increased safety Improved ride and NVH More flexible packaging Lower lifecycle impact Potential for paint shop elimination The obvious question that arises, and the one that this paper will answer, is: How does the Autokinetics spaceframe architecture compete on cost?