The two-day event kicked off with ArcelorMittal’s Jean-Martin Van der Hoeven, Vice President ArcelorMittal, Chief Marketing Officer Global Automotive, and Mobility Solutions and Head of Sustainability Development, Climate Action Team, ArcelorMittal Europe presenting “Changes, Challenges and Opportunities.”
The annual IABC event began in 1993 and provides a forum for discussion at an engineer-to-engineer level. The two-day agenda is heavily focused on the transformation of the automotive industry from internal combustion engines to battery electric vehicles.
Jean-Martin set the stage for ArcelorMittal’s role in the conference, addressing ArcelorMittal’s priorities and strategies to address climate change. “The single impact of climate change is profound,” Jean-Martin contends. “We are at a crucial moment in developing the battery electric vehicle.”
The BEV discussion today, contends Jean-Martin, is about the underbody structure. He points to the most important factors for the structure including lightweighting, sustainability (CO2 impact), responsible sourcing of raw materials, geopolitical impacts from raw material sourcing, the vehicle operating cost for the buyer (insurance, repairability), the vehicle’s circularity and the capital and operating expenses for manufacturing.
He stresses that ArcelorMittal steel solutions offer the best technology for the BEV underbody structure, with weight savings over megacasting structures. Ultra-High Strength Steels (UHSS) and ArcelorMittal Multi Part Integration™ technology remain key for passive safety, weight savings, range optimization, sustainability of BEV’s, low CO2 intensity, affordability and repairability.
Jean-Martin emphasized ArcelorMittal’s leading technology position amongst steel companies, sharing with attendees that 10 out of 12 ArcelorMittal major North American OEM customers share with our teams that ArcelorMittal is the top technology steel company.