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Aluminum and polymer composites have long been considered the materials of choice for achieving mass reduction in automotive structures. As consumer and government demand for mass reduction grows, the use of these materials, which have traditionally been more expensive than the incumbent steel, becomes more likely. In response to this growing challenge, the international steel community has joined forces to develop the Ultra Light Steel Auto Body (ULSAB). The resulting design saves mass and increases performance relative to current steel unibodies. Although mass savings are not as dramatic as those achieved by alternative materials, this design offers the potential to be accompanied by a manufacturing cost reduction. The projected manufacturing piece and investment cost for the ULSAB are investigated using technical cost modeling. The results presented here examine the elements that contribute to the cost, including treatments for stamping, hydroforming, assembly and purchased parts.

The ability to make accurate decisions concerning early body-in-white architectures is critical to an automaker since these decisions often have long term cost and weight impacts. We address this need with a methodology which can be used to assist in body architecture decisions using process-based technical cost modeling (TCM) as a filter to evaluate alternate designs. Despite the data limitations of early design concepts, TCM can be used to identify key trends for cost-effectiveness between design variants. A compact body-in-white architecture will be used as a case study to illustrate this technique. The baseline steel structure will be compared to several alternate aluminum intensive structures in the context of production volume.