Competitors jointly tackle tech hurdles in aluminum

Putting aluminum to use in vehicle construction is hardly new. But it has tended to occur among high-end, low-volume vehicles. When it comes to high-volume mainstream vehicles, aluminum suppliers face a challenge in capturing content opportunities for components such as safety cages and B-pillars.

Two major competitors — Novelis and Constellium — are out to address that through a new consortium they call Alumobility. The Swiss-based partnership hopes to present automakers with new ideas and technical solutions to enable more aluminum adoption.

Two consortium participants, Jack Clark, 61, chief technology officer for Constellium, and Pierre Labat, 54, Novelis vice president for global automotive, spoke with News Editor Lindsay Chappell about the plan. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: Your two companies are already making headway in the auto industry. Why do you need this consortium?

A: Labat: Our customers were telling us that you folks are coming to us with innovations, but for us to be able to use them, we need you to help solve technical issues, and also to create an ecosystem to help us implement them. We could do it alone, but it will be much faster to create that ecosystem with like-minded partners.

Clark: By doing this, we can really drive the adoption of aluminum and lightweighting much faster. I've been in the aluminum business my entire career at different companies, and I have to be critical and say that the aluminum industry has not been good at collaboration.

Where's the opportunity?

Labat: Aluminum traditionally has been more about body sheet. We see a lot more growth in closures, hang-ons and fenders. Those are easy applications when it comes to integrating the components into a vehicle body shop.

But when you need structural components, where you need joining and welding, and high-strength products, the aluminum industry still needs to develop the ecosystem, needs to get those to the finish line.

What do you mean when you speak of developing an ecosystem?

Labat: Take the example of parts made from ultra-high-strength aluminum. Like steel, they have to be hot-formed. But there are not a lot of companies that can do hot-forming for aluminum. And you need the technology to be able to join those materials together.

We need to develop solutions to supply not just 10,000 cars a year, but a million cars a year.

How will this help?

Clark: We don't want to merely create a great idea and throw it over to the automakers to figure out.

We want to provide them with the solution to do it. We want to show the automaker that this is the design, these are the savings and here is how it will be manufactured.