Summary of “Magnesium Vision 2020: A North American Automotive Strategic Vision for Magnesium”

This paper summarizes the monograph, “Magnesium Vision 2020. A North American Automotive Strategic Vision for Magnesium”1 prepared under the auspices of the United States Automotive Materials Partnership The objective was to understand the infrastructural and technical challenge that can increase the use of magnesium in the automotive industry. One hundred sixty three (163) Research and Technology Development Themes (RTDTs), or RTD projects were developed that addressed issues of corrosion, fastening, and processing-other-than-high pressure die casting to produce automotive magnesium parts. A major problem identified in the study is the limited ability of the current magnesium industrial infrastructure to supply RTD and implementation-ready automotive magnesium components. One solution is to create a magnesium cyber center wrhere globally networked experts would be able to innovate in process and product development, model metalworking and non-HPDC foundry processes, and integrate theoretical predictions/models of metallurgical structure with component function.