[StigMN]

As many reviewers have mentioned the car has a lot of steel parts, where other manufacturers choose lighter materials. The cars weigh is over 2000kilo / 4400lbs.
Do you think the range would differ with lighter parts? How much?

 

[Spin]

Steel is cheaper than aluminium or composites. If you want a lighter vehicle with more exotic materials it would be more expensive.

 

[SunWizard]

Using ABRP which uses very good modeling for everything to compute range, 100 pounds of added weight lowers range <1 mile. So switching to lighter parts would not help much.

 

[Huey52]

Case in point the steel hood/bonnet. It would have been nice to have aluminum. But the steel hood is thin multi-layer/brace configuration so they lessened the weight of same to some degree.

The Audi Q4 likely has far more aluminum components.

Same cost-value discussion btw always arises between 'Winter beater' steel wheel rims vs. all-season OEM alloy vs. Summer performance forged alloy vs. track-exotic magnesium.

Steel is cheaper than aluminium or composites. If you want a lighter vehicle with more exotic materials it would be more expensive.

 

[Fahrer]

I have looked at an ID.4 at a dealer and found that the hood is very heavy. It is a non-structural part and, theoretically could easily be made from aluminum but I am sure it is steel due to the behavior in a pedestrian impact test.
Making a car from aluminum rather than steel drives the cost up for production and body repairs. Steel is cheap, strong and more easily to design with. Aluminum would likely shave off a few hundred pounds. I remember a Land Rover that was constructed from aluminum but ended up being more heavy than it would have been from steel. My guess is that they encountered some structural issues and had to add more reinforcement/aluminum.

 

[Huey52]

My first such experience with steel -> aluminum transition was actually SCUBA tanks way back in the day. The AL tank was somewhat larger for the same compressed air volume as the wall thickness had to be greater to compensate for less structural strength than steel. Given that material size increase the overall weight was pretty close, with AL still a bit lighter. But it did have the innate non-rusting properties which was a big plus, as steel tanks in my locale could only be "rolled" (internal shot or lathe cleaned) once before replacement was required. The AL tanks were also more expensive.

 

[Dougie01]

Plenty of steel cars have aluminum hoods. MGB and Miata, for example, for weight distribution reasons. Body shops have no problem working with aluminum, I had significant body repair work done on my Honda Insight and they didn’t care. A competent welder knows how to deal with it.

Hopefully the aftermarket community will come up with a replacement hood, aluminum or carbon fiber.