SuperLIGHT-CAR is a collaborative RTD (Research & Technological Development) project co-funded by the European Commission and coordinated with other major RTD projects throughout the umbrella of the European Council for Automotive Research (EUCAR) as part of the roadmap for reducing CO₂ emissions and mitigating climate change. In the SuperLIGHT-CAR project 38 automotive leading organizations work together for the research and production of on road transportation vehicles. With weight saving being one of the most effective ways to reduce fuel consumption and therefore CO₂ emissions of road transport, the SuperLIGHT-CAR partners work together to bring lightweight automotive technologies closer to high volume car production. This way the project, transferred to the mass production of lighten vehicles, and referring in this study to the C segment category, allows to reach the important objective of supplying a solid base for saving of million of tons of fuel and CO₂.

Project objectives

SuperLIGHT-CAR overall objective is to develop lightweight, multi-material concepts up to 30% lighter than present high-volume production produced cars.

This is only possible by means of exploiting lightweight materials’ combinations, developing joining technologies needed for reliable and efficient assembling and by filling the gaps on present design/simulation tools currently being “not able” to predict neither multi-material design reliability nor to assess affordability and sustainability.

The project objective is the realization of advanced multi-material lightweight vehicle structures achieving:

• 30% weight reduced vehicle structure (Body-In-White);
• Manufacturing additional costs between 2,5€ and 10€ per kg saved as compared to the current costs for series cars in the same C- class;
• Technologies suitable for large series production (approx. 1000 cars/day);
• Equivalent performance (C-class segment), e.g. crash, fatigue, etc.;
• Reduced raw material consumption (up to 30%).