Innovations in the automotive industry require steel even lighter and more resistant.
Therefore, in the last 10 years, Ternium has increased its efforts for the development and research of new products that allow the production of specialized steel for this type of industries.
Such was emphasized by Fernando Actis, Product and Research Director, and Pablo Mendoza, Research Manager, during their participation in the second edition of Tooling Supplier Meetings, organized by the Tooling Cluster and the Department of Economy and Labor of Nuevo Leon.
During the conference called Advanced Steels, Actis talked about the technological roadmap of the company in the last few years, which focuses on advanced steels for the automotive industry.
“In the last decade, Ternium has risen to the challenge. It has been strengthened with strategical alliances, acquisitions, relevant investments, an increasing effort in the Research and Development Department, and a great innovation of the steels we develop,” he said.
For example, the participation of the company in Steel E-Motive should be emphasized, a program from World Auto Steel whose objective is designing and developing a vehicle with advanced steels to demonstrate that this material is essential for the future of the automotive sector.
Actis and Pedraza emphasized the importance of steel for the products of the future.
The world’s leading companies participated in this program launched in November 2020, and several automotive companies are part of the advisory board. Steel E-Motive relies on the participation of the Global Engineering and Environmental Consulting Firm Ricardo, which is in charge of the design and the integrated engineering of the vehicle.
“Vehicle innovation is strongly being set by autonomous, connected, electric vehicles. A radical change is coming regarding the conception of vehicles, which has a huge impact on how we must think about steel,” he mentioned.
“The user looks for a safer vehicle too, with less environmental impact and a longer lifetime, which leads manufacturers to electrification as the best solution to decrease the environmental footprint. As for improving safety, a high corrosion resistance, which implies increased participation of the steel in the vehicle.”
Actis highlighted the operation start of the new Hot Rolling Mill at the Ternium Industrial Center, a facility in which specialized steels are produced for the automotive industry and white goods.
Located at the Ternium Industrial Center, the new Hot Rolling Mill has high-end technology.
On the other hand, Pedraza talked about how metallurgy has evolved and its importance in the production of high-resistance steel for the automotive industry.
Pedraza highlighted that the vehicles manufactured nowadays have a 70% of structural components that didn’t exist in the industry 15 years ago. That is why many challenges have been faced in the market.
“We can say that the innovation steps have been huge, but have also been challenging for the products. For the products, the transformation mechanism has had to evolve, they have had to face a higher resistance”, he mentioned.
“Nowadays, high-resistance steel has put us in a passionate situation. In a moment in which the supply forces us to innovate in the industry, the next 20 years will be much more accelerated, especially in the transformation processes with a sustainability focus.”