Safety and light integration of alternative powertrains with innovative material concepts

Parallel to the development of the automobile with combustion engines at the end of the 19th century, researchers also developed successfully on electric vehicles. As two substantial examples Werner von Siemens with his electrically powered carriage (1882) or the electric cars developed by Ludwig Lohner und Ferdinand Porsche for the world exhibition 1900 in Paris can be pointed out. Because of their significant expanded range, availability and price of the fossil fuels as well as the quick refuel process, passenger cars with combustion engines dominate the 20th century. During the last years, the frame conditions like the increased price and limitedness of fossil fuels but also the social desirability changed. Therefore, electric vehicles experience a renaissance [1].This trend is reinforced by simultaneously staged megatrends like autonomous driving, car sharing, regions inside Asia and Africa with increased needs for transportation concepts or the topic of “last-kilometre” transportation for goods, which result in turn into demands for application-specific material concepts. As the main requirements for the mentioned application field of transportation, the topics of lightweight, safety (resistance against impact), ability for multi-material-design (joinability) but also recyclability and the material-specific CO2-footprint (life cycle engineering) can be highlighted [2, 3].