For the past couple months you may have read reports by the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and other newspapers about the growth of the use of aluminum in the automobile industry. The average vehicle today has about 250 pounds of the metal and that figure promises to double within a few years. In a word, no. We need to take a closer look at the material properties of aluminum in order to see why. Aluminum has been used in demanding, high-stress applications for many years.
Every commercial airplane flying today is made almost entirely from aluminum.
The Space Shuttle is 90 percent aluminum. Clearly the demands of temperature, pressurization and stress loads dictate a material that is robust, predictable and corrosion-free. Aerospace engineers have considered aluminum the material of choice for decades and there is no foreseeable replacement in sight. Legendary race cars like the 300 SL Gullwing, AC Cobra, GT 40, Jaguar D-Type and many others achieved their status largely as the result of using aluminum for their structure. This stored energy can be enormous because mathematically it increases as a function of the vehicle's speed squared.