Plastic Bonanza Inbound!

There is a t now in place for foreign steel and aluminum. I think most people can grasp how paying 50% more for steel and aluminum will increase the price of a new car, but I don't see anyone talking about how this will affect future car designs. This should be the real concern.

If plastic had a cost advantage before, what will a 50% increase of imported steel do to future designs? The answer is nothing good, awful, and catastrophic. If you were afraid of complicated designs, this is even worse than that because it'll fail whether you maintain it or not.

Parts that were a maybe for using metal will now surely be a "hell yeah use plastic". It will supercharge their incentive to substitute metal for worse materials that fail. Get ready for a plastic bonanza, wet timing belt anyone?

 

Saturn’s back in style baby!

But honestly, given how policy here changes on a dime and vehicle development cycles can be years-long, I don’t expect vehicles to be redesigned much, if at all.

Maybe small substitutions here and there, but probably those that have already been planned since adding plastic where there hasn’t been plastic before has been a trend for quite a while. (ex. ‘19 HR-V has a plastic valve cover I believe)

Probably less vehicles will be made in the US as manufacturers look to ride it out. Maybe offset by manufacturing outside country but who knows how the math shakes out.

Given some posts even seen here, that is very optimistic of you!

 

Good point! First thought is injection molded body panels. Second thought, that might not be a bad thing in the salt belt lol.

Third thought, tarriffs probably won’t affect the core manufacturing design of cars. Auto manufacturers might just sit, watch, wait, because it hasn’t been possible to guess what will or wont happen and for how long it will last. And I’d imagine they can’t count on the possibility of using US produced steel if there isn’t enough to go around. Not sure that the US has the capacity to guarantee that much domestic steel production, and even if did, it would be priced according to market conditions (which would demand high prices).

It might be cheaper for manufacturers to limit participation in the US market through eye-watering MSRPs until they can be sure the government knows what it wants. It would a huge risk to redesign global products that take a decade to develop for something that might completely change at the drop of a hat.

 

They're going to start or have started making plastic from corn. So it degrades and recycles.
I saw a whole show on it.

 

My powered-by-Honda lawn mower has a SOHC engine with plastic timing belt

 

Anybody remember the Fiero?

 

"My car bring all the mice to the yard..."

 

Great. Now everyone will get plastic skid plates.