Automotive steel applications

Docol® steel grades serve specific design purposes and are chosen by designers for a wide range of applications and used by OEMs and tier suppliers in millions of vehicles around the world.

Structural body parts

Parts such as sill reinforcements and cross-members must have both high-energy absorption capabilities and low weight. Stiffness can be maintained with optimized shape.

Chassis

High-strength steels provide chassis with excellent formability and fatigue resistance properties.

Learn about advancing chassis with Docol® AHSS

Bumpers

AHSS steels provide high-force absorption for bumper reinforcements while achieving major weight reduction.

Learn more about bumpers

Door beams

The high-strength levels of AHSS steel result in major weight reductions when upgrading side impact beams.

Seating

Car seats provide a critical safety structure for occupants. Advanced high steel steels can be used throughout the seat frame, significantly reducing their weight while meeting or exceeding current safety requirements.

Learn more about car seats

EV battery protection

Electric car batteries are expensive and hazardous if damaged in a crash. They also require underside protection from road debris and an enclosure that contains battery liquids in the event of a collision. Docol AHSS steels can help to ensure the strongest EV battery protection with the lowest possible weight.

Learn about EV battery protection

Cross members

Cross members can further stiffen the car body, transfer side impact loads, and, in BEVs, protect battery packs. With their high strength, cross members made in AHSS and UHSS steels can increase both crash performance and vehicle responsiveness.

Frame rails

Frame rails, aka subframe rails, for trucks and light commercial vehicles (LCVs) require strength, stiffness, and fatigue resistance: AHSS and UHSS steels provide all that, plus significant lightweighting advantages.

Learn more about frame rails

Light commercial vehicles

Light commercial vehicles can optimize designs using AHSS and UHSS steels for lightweighting and strengthening their chassis, structural components and EV battery cages.

Truck cabins

Truck cabin frames need to be light-in-weight, while providing for sustained driver comfort. With innovative designs and highly formable AHSS steels, designers can use complex geometries to increase cabin stiffness – reducing NVH – while also reducing driver blind spots.

Learn more about truck cabins

AHSS and UHSS applications for heavy trucks

Heavy-duty and commercial truck OEMs can take advantage of decades of car designers’ AHSS/UHSS experience when optimizing their own designs. Advanced high strength steel can allow for lighter, stronger, safer components throughout your truck’s structure.

Go to heavy trucks applications

Product program for all our automotive steel grades

New formulations and grades of Docol® high-strength steels enable you to produce vehicles that are stronger, lighter and more energy efficient.

Take a look at our full product program

Read more about our steels

AHSS lightweighting of truck components

For many truckers, lightweighting isn’t so much about fuel efficiency as it is about total cost and freight efficiency: being able to earn higher revenue by hauling more — while staying under the legal weight limits. Some truck components that had been switched from traditional carbon steel to lightweight aluminum, or even carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRPs), are now good candidates for more economical and durable advanced high strength steels (AHSSs).

With Docol® steel, Shape Corp. has improved body structure components for cars

The basic shape of the car hasn’t changed much in a century, but a lot of evolution has happened to the body structure. Thanks to advanced high-strength steel grades from SSAB, Shape Corp. has been able to improve the body structure components of vehicles, with increased safety and reduced weight as a result.

Meet these new hot-rolled Docol® 800MPa steels

To form or stretch cut edges that are crack-free can be a major challenge when working with advanced-high strength steels (AHSS). To reduce the risk of cracked raised edges, SSAB has introduced two new hot-rolled 800 megapascal steels with extremely high edge ductility.