The global environmental and traffic concerns, identified as a negative inheritance of the last century, should be addressed in this century to minimise the future impact of the expanding vehicle population. Among the global concerns, the reduction of CO_2 and other auto emissions is an especially important challenge. The development of new systems and technologies are, of course, being carried out to tackle these issues. At the same time, vehicle weight has shown a trend of increasing recently, due, in a part, to the addition of equipment that increases safety and comfort. Unfortunately, increased vehicle weight has a negative impact on lowering emissions. Considering this background, successfully vehicle weight reduction has been identified as one of the most important needs to meeting future automotive goals. To this end, the application of aluminium, the lightest practical metal, is so attractive for weight reduction that there are now many researchers working on the development of aluminum alloys for automotive.
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