METEF AND SALEMA PROJECT

E-TECH EUROPE 2024 hosted an event organized by Metef in collaboration with the SALEMA European Project and dedicated to electric mobility and the aluminium supply chain.

The automotive industry is facing multiple challenges in achieving the goals of the European Green Deal. New, high-performance but lightweight materials need to be produced and dependence on imported raw materials needs to be reduced, while creating a sustainable economy for the future. How to solve this conundrum? SALEMA partners see the solution in aluminium. This lightweight, inexpensive and fully recyclable metal can meet the highest technical requirements and is ready for mass production. Aluminium is not a new solution in automobiles if we consider that on average, in cars produced on a large scale, 15 percent of all parts are made of aluminium, while in the case of electric vehicles this percentage exceeds 50 percent mainly because of its main characteristic i.e., light weight. Therefore, the European automotive sector needs reliable sources of aluminium that do not depend on critical raw material imports from abroad. SALEMA, a European Union-funded project, has been designed to produce new aluminium alloys with a minimum content of critical raw materials (silicon and magnesium) or by integrating scrap metal recycling. The integration of scrap metal recycling is crucial to creating a sustainable circular economy and will be a reliable source of high-quality alloys in the future.

SALEMA relied on the collaboration of 16 partners from six European countries that combined their strengths to make the electric vehicle industry greener, reducing the EU’s dependence on raw material imports.
The project began in 2021 and ends in April 2024, and its results will be presented at this event.
SALEMA demonstrated the potential of the newly studied alloys in electric vehicle manufacturing by creating five case-study car components: the shock tower, frontal frame, B-pillar, battery compartment, and body-in-white (inner hood).