Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragoneye
The advancements in metallurgy isn't all that recent. Aluminum and high-strength steel has been around for a very long time...the issue has always been, and is still, cost. The price hike involved with doing something like that isn't "minor" at all. We're talking in the multiple thousands of dollars. And on $20,000-$30,000 cars, that's a huge amount of money just to save 200 lbs (on average)......which is 90% of the reason these techniques are not being implemented on a larger scale.
As for decreasing the size of a vehicle...I think we're seeing that, generally-speaking. For all the talk about how "big" the Camaro is...it's shorter in length than a 4thgen...and only about 2 inches taller (to facilitate a better seating position). It's also no bigger than a 2005-present Mustang.  Same goes for the Corvette (shorter than the C5 -- and the C7 is rumored to be shorter than the C6)...same goes for the new Cruze (shorter by a bit than the Cobalt), etc. The trouble with this theory is, however -- all this saftey, refinement, etc takes up space...and so to compensate for the space taken up in the interiors of cars, it's easy to just bump the body panels out an inch...
Again -- weight is bad, I agree...but there are reasons behind it...none of which are inherently 'bad'. |
by recent i meant around 10 years. I agree that for most cars the price increase is not worth having the slightly less weight which is why these metals are only implemented into luxury/sports/exotic cars.
i would like to say i dont plan on having an aluminum structured mustang/camaro any time soon. however science may adapt in such a way that may allow the production of these metals to become cheaper.
Re-reading your post ive come to the conclusion we are thinking the same thing but wording our thoughts differently.
weight=bad. but the reason the extra weight is there=good.