ArcelorMittal’s Usibor® has excellent crash-resistant properties and is particularly suitable for use in safety-critical zones in cars — for example, it is used to produce lightweight B-pillars (the vertical support between a car's front door window and rear side window) in cars.
 
From France via Belgium to Germany After stopping off in the ArcelorMittal automotive research center in Montataire near Paris and ArcelorMittal Gent, Belgium, the Discovery Channel’s camera team went on to Volkswagen’s main plant in Wolfsburg, Germany — the company’s largest production site with a workforce of 50,000. 
 
At Volkswagen, the cameras followed steel’s journey through to the production stage, filming the steel parts being cut to size from giant coils and processed into car parts.
 
The Discovery Channel will broadcast the program in spring 2014, showing the story from the research stage, on to the blast furnace, hot rolling, coating and cutting, through to hot stamping and assembly of the Golf VII.
 
Hot stamping
The centerpiece of the car production process is hot stamping, which takes place in the press plant in Wolfsburg. A total of 25 different parts are hot stamped and brought to the correct shape before moving to the assembly line.
 
A Volkswagen expert at the press plant explains: “After hot stamping, the steel is up to three times stronger and more resistant than before.” The steel has already been treated at ArcelorMittal’s galvanizing lines to provide other properties such as highly durable corrosion resistance.
 
State-of-the-art steel makes the Golf VII lighter
In addition to the Touran and Tiguan, the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg mainly produces the new Golf VII, which is up to 100kg lighter than its predecessor model — the Golf VI, thanks to innovations including hot stamping steels such as ArcelorMittal’s Usibor® 1500.
 
As Armin Plath, Volkswagen’s head of materials research and manufacturing, mentioned following the launch of the Golf VII in January 2013: “Volkswagen is using high strength steels in increasing amounts. It is a very cost effective way of reducing weight. Using new innovations in steel engineering… it is possible to reduce weight without the use for more costly materials such as aluminum and carbon fiber.”
 
Want to know more?
View ‘How do they do it?’ clips here
 
Picture captions:
1: Discovery Channel at work: advanced high strength steels car parts after hot stamping
2: The Golf VII on the production line: the dark steel parts highlight the advanced high strength steels used in the car’s body-in-white