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Backing the right horse? Safeguarding PM part usage in a new automotive industry No matter our personal views on electrification, we can all agree that the automotive landscape, and with it, one of PM’s leading consumer markets, is changing. Currently, much of our industry’s focus is on how best to market PM’s strengths as an EV-enhancing technology to the traditional ‘Big 5’ automakers. But is this strategy enough? In this article, EV commentator Alex Voigt, with input from PM Review’s Emily-Jo Hopson-VandenBos, compares Tesla’s approach to that of traditional automakers, and asks whether the PM industry should keep its focus on those companies that have traditionally led the auto industry, or whether it is new relationships with flexible, innovative startups that will safeguard the future of Powder Metallurgy as a supplier to the automotive industry.
For a long time, the PM industry has been preoccupied with concerns over the decline of the internal combustion engine (ICE), the rise of the electrified automotive industry, and how to get PM parts into electrified vehicle engines. Those concerns are founded in good sense; regardless of our opinions on the viability of vehicle electrification, often discussed in these pages, we all know that without a concerted effort to find PM parts a core position within the new automotive manufacturing supply chain, our industry will suffer. Many of those efforts are focused on ensuring decision-makers at today’s major automotive companies are aware of press and sinter Powder Metallurgy as a green, affordable, versatile and sustainable manufacturing solution. If a legacy automaker were to approve the use of a PM part in a new massproduced battery electric vehicle (BEV), many in the PM industry would breathe a sigh of relief; here is another PM application safeguarding our future.
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However, automotive industry journalist Alex Voigt suggests that to protect PM’s future as a key supplier to the biggest automotive names in the world, we must reassess who those names are likely to be in future. That is to say: while we worry about how to woo the traditional Big 5 automakers with the promise of PM
as an EV-enhancing technology, we run the risk of backing the wrong horse in the race. In Voigt’s career as an automotive industry journalist, he has seen the landscape shift, for the first time in over a century, away from the old giants and toward new names, most notably Tesla. While Elon Musk’s
Fig. 1 Tesla’s Model 3 BEV is one of its two mass-produced vehicles (Courtesy Tesla)
Summer 2022
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