Lightweight Materials in Electric Vehicles

Review Lightweight Materials in Electric Vehicles Xianyan Zhou 1,*, Jun Jiang 2, Zhili Hu 3, and Lin Hua 3 1 Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7491 Trondheim, Norway 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2AZ, UK 3 School of Automotive Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Luoshi Road, Wuhan, 430070, China * Correspondence: xianyan.zhou@ntnu.no Received: 23 September 2022 Accepted: 21 November 2022 Published: 18 December 2022 Abstract: Lightweight materials are highly demanded in electric vehicles (EVs) to reduce environmental impacts and energy consumption. Aluminium alloys are promising materials in EVs due to their advantages such as high specific strength, corrosion resistance and recyclability. However, forming complex-shaped thin-wall aluminium products is challenging due to their poor formability and limited dimensional accuracy. Meanwhile, recycling some of the high-strength aluminium alloys from EVs is still challenging. This review highlights some of the future potential aluminium forming techniques for EV production, including incremental sheet forming (ISF), hot forming and quenching (HFQ ® ) technique, and transverse stretching and local bending (TSLB). Also, the issues associated with aluminium recycling are listed and discussed. This review provides scientific guidance to the industry and the scientific community for advancing the applications of aluminium alloys in EVs.