JFE Steel Adds New Automotive Grade High Tensile Steel Items

JFE Steel announced on Wednesday the firm developed new automotive high tensile sheet steel items with better pressing formability including galvannealed steel sheet or GA with 780 mega pascal of strength and cold rolled steel with 1,180 MPa of strength. The firm developed the GA steel with Suzuki Motor Corporation. Suzuki already uses the GA steel for structural parts of MR wagon, which the firm launched in January while JFE Steel started mass production. JFE Steel already shipped sample of the new cold rolled steel for automakers and is closing the deal with an automakers for material of structural parts around cabin. The firm targets monthly 3,000 tonnes of the GA sales and 1,000 tonnes of the cold rolled steel sales in 3 years. JFE Steel developed the new GA steel to improve performance in ductility and hole expansion for better formability during pressing process. The new GA has more than double of better press formability. With the new GA, automakers can use 780 MPa high tensile steel for large parts, for which they use 270 MPa high tensile steel now, and automakers can reduce cost for supporting materials and additional processes and reduce automobile weight. Suzuki uses around 2 kilogram per unit of the new GA for rear cross member of MR wagon. The firm reduced the weight by 25% compared with that with 270 MPa high tensile steel. JFE Steel developed the new 1,180 MPa high tensile cold rolled steel to reduce weight of structural parts of automobile. The firm markets the new item with existing water quench series with 780 MPa and 980 MPa of high tensile. The new cold rolled steel with 1,180 MPa of high tensile has 1.5 times of ductility compared with traditional high tensile steel with 1,180 MPa of strength while the new item has same performance in ductility and hole expansion as traditional high tensile steel with 980 MPa of strength.