Additive manufacturing for the automotive industry

Abstract The automotive industry is one of the most competitive industries worldwide. New market and design trends emerge continuously, requiring new manufacturing approaches to comply with the automotive industry. Additive manufacturing (AM) provides an important competitive edge to this industrial domain, acting as a disruptive approach by shortening products design and development, delivering flexibility on production, and producing optimized automotive components and customized vehicle products upon request. Automotive production benefits from the use of AM on soft assembly tools or specialized tools to produce vehicle components. The freeform capacity offered by AM enables the design and direct production of optimized automotive components, focused on vehicles performance as well as customized assembly tools to enhance productivity. Another related AM technical advantage is the possibility of producing lightweight components, supported by generative design algorithms. Last but not least, the time-to-market on AM parts decreased significantly, enabling the concept of mass customization. The strong trend on energy consumption decrease poses new challenges regarding vehicles design, performance, and regulations compliance. AM is the key-enabling technology for new vehicles considering the actual paradigm shift from the common combustion engine to alternate motion systems. This chapter presents an overview on AM applications on the automotive industry, focused on the technical and economic impact provided by this manufacturing technology.