Kobe Steel to supply Nissan with low-carbon steel and green aluminium
Starting this year, Nissan has committed to using low-carbon steel and green aluminium for its vehicles, thanks to a partnership with Kobe Steel. Nissan comments:
“Given that approximately 60 per cent of a vehicle’s weight is made up of steel parts and about 10 per cent of its weight is made up of aluminium parts, using green steel and green aluminium is a highly effective way to reduce CO2 emissions during parts manufacturing, which is part of the vehicle’s lifecycle.”
The company’s steel, known as ‘Kobenable‘, significantly reduces CO2 emissions during manufacturing through the mass balance method. Kobe Steel will also supply Nissan with green fabricated aluminium sheets, which are electrolytically melted using only solar energy, thereby reducing CO2 emissions during aluminium ingot production by approximately 50%.
This will be the first time that ‘Kobenable Steel’ will be used in mass-produced vehicles. Last summer, Kobe Steel announced that its steel was adopted by Toyota Motor Corporation as an automotive component material used in the hydrogen-powered Corolla, making it the first commercialisation of low-CO2 blast furnace steel products in Japan.
This partnership is part of both companies’ goal to achieve a carbon-neutral society in the near future. Nissan aims to achieve carbon neutrality throughout the product life cycle by 2050.
This type of agreement is not a novelty among car manufacturers, having previously known similar important agreements with major companies such as Volkswagen, Ford, and even Volvo, which secured the supply of CO2-neutral steel with SSAB, with whom Mercedes-Benz has also reached an agreement.
The original text of this article has been extracted from this link. Thanks.