Automobile industry's high requirements on steel products

In recent years, Chinese automobile industry has experienced a high-speed development. Both automobile production and sales increased very fast. The number of the automobiles sold increased from 2.07 million in 2000 to 5.76 million in 2005, with 20 percent average annual growth. The figure is expected to reach 6.5 million in 2006. If it happens, China will be the third largest automobile market in the world. Some people even forecast that the automobile quantity made in China will even reach 8-10 million. Automobile manufacturing not only consumes plenty of steel, but also promotes the improvement of steel products in terms of steel requirement on various automobile components. Therefore, automobile industry's development trend will have great influence on steel industry. Automobile is a special body consists of various components and high technology. With tighter environmental and personal requirements, automobile manufactures have to face many problems and put forward solutions for these problems. However, apparently they cannot resolve all the problems by themselves. Therefore, they transfer some of them to their suppliers. Of course, as their major suppliers, steelmakers have to face the highest pressure. Along with the improvement in automobile quality and production skills, steel's function is becoming more and more important. Currently, challenges that automobile industry should encounter mainly include three aspects: energy consumption, pollution and safety. To lower energy consumption and pollution, and improve safety, apart from redesigning auto parts, wide use of special quality steel products is another important solution. For the automobile industry, steel products can be developed with regards to the following issues: • Less weight and higher strength/intensity – to lower automobile's weight and maintain safety. • Excellent elongation quality for deep drawn • Excellent anti-rust quality. • Excellent welding quality. • Excellent cutting quality. • Excellent painting quality. In practice, normally a type of steel product should possess more than one of the above-listed features. For example, IF (Interstitial Free) steel based electrical and hot-dip galvanized products possess at least three of these features. Therefore, IF steel is widely used in automobile industry. It is forecasted that China's automobile development cycle will last at least 40 years more. 2030, the quantity of the automobiles running in China is expected to even exceed that in the US. This means there is a big market in China for the types of steel used in the automobile industry.