The Lightweight Trend Sweeps the Automotive Industry: Aluminum Alloy Casting Components Embrace a New Development Opportunity
With the upgrading of global environmental awareness and the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry, automotive lightweighting has become a core issue in the industry’s transformation. Against this backdrop, aluminum alloy casting components, relying on their unique material advantages and extensive application potential, are ushering in unprecedented market opportunities. Meanwhile, the lightweight trend is also placing higher demands on their production processes and enterprises’ technological innovation.
As one of the core materials for automotive lightweighting, aluminum alloy achieves a perfect balance between performance and cost. Data shows that the density of aluminum alloy is only 2.7g/cm³, far lower than that of traditional steel (7.8g/cm³). When applied to automotive components, it can achieve a weight reduction effect of 30%-60%, significantly improving vehicle energy efficiency and cruising range. Compared with other lightweight materials such as magnesium alloy and carbon fiber, aluminum alloy has higher process maturity and stronger production stability, which can fully meet the multiple needs of automotive structural parts for performance, quality, and supply efficiency, making it the preferred material for current automakers to achieve lightweighting goals. Among them, aluminum alloy casting components play a key role in the “three-electric systems” of new energy vehicles due to their adaptation to the manufacturing needs of core components such as motor housings, reducer housings, and wheel hubs.
The explosive growth of the new energy vehicle market has injected strong demand momentum into aluminum alloy casting components. For new energy vehicles, lightweighting is the most direct and effective way to alleviate “range anxiety” — at a time when battery technology has not yet achieved breakthrough progress, replacing traditional iron components with aluminum alloy casting components can significantly reduce the vehicle weight and directly increase the cruising range. As mainstream automakers continue to increase investment in new energy production capacity, the market demand for high-precision aluminum alloy casting components is continuously expanding.
Policy guidance and technological upgrading have further opened up market space while posing severe challenges to production processes. China’s Energy-Saving and New Energy Vehicle Technology Roadmap clearly plans that the aluminum usage per vehicle will reach 250kg by 2025 and further increase to 350kg by 2030. This goal forces the aluminum alloy casting process to evolve towards higher precision and efficiency. At the production process level, the demand for lightweighting drives components towards larger size and integration, requiring enterprises to master cutting-edge technologies such as integrated die casting — for example, the application of 6800T and 9000T large-scale die casting equipment needs to realize one-time forming of complex structural parts. This not only puts forward requirements for the accuracy of mold design (such as wall thickness uniformity and stress distribution control) but also needs to solve the problem of collaborative optimization of process parameters such as high-temperature aluminum liquid filling speed and cooling rate to avoid defects such as shrinkage holes and cracks. At the same time, to meet the higher requirements of new energy vehicles for component strength and corrosion resistance, the control of material melting purity during casting (such as impurity content below 0.01%) and the refinement of heat treatment processes (such as aging temperature fluctuation controlled within ±2℃) have become core control points, ensuring that castings meet structural safety while reducing weight.
Technological innovation is the core competitiveness for enterprises to seize the lightweight track. Currently, leading enterprises in the industry have increased their layout efforts to respond to process requirements through technological innovation. Driven by both the “new four modernizations” of automobiles and the lightweight trend, the aluminum alloy casting components market will continue to release growth potential. On the one hand, the increase in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles will directly drive the demand for core components; on the other hand, traditional fuel vehicles will also accelerate their lightweight transformation to cope with fuel consumption regulations, further expanding the market space. For aluminum alloy casting component enterprises, focusing on the two main lines of production process upgrading (such as large-scale die casting and precision forming) and technological innovation (material research and development, digital design), and continuously improving product precision and reliability will be the key to seizing industry opportunities and achieving high-quality development.
Facing this historical opportunity, Zhengheng Power is actively engaged in technological upgrading and production capacity optimization, with higher-standard products and services, helping automakers overcome lightweight challenges and jointly promoting the automotive industry towards greenization and intelligence.
Post time: Aug-26-2025
