Magna Steyr Mila Blue: Lightweight Excellence

One of the key aspect that carmakers nowadays are focussing is to make their offerings as light as possible. In sportscars or supercars, weight reduction is done to improve the car’s power-to-weight ratio and increasing its performance. Whereas mainstream manufacturers are striving hard on this front, to make their cars more fuel efficient. As a lighter car will burn less fuel and can be powered by a smaller displacement motor thereby improving the overall efficiency and reducing its emissions. To demonstrate how lightweight components can be applied in production cars, Austrian manufacturer Magna Steyr showcased the Mila Blue concept car, which tips the scale at just 670kg. This figure is remarkable, as the Mila Blue concept is lighter by over 300kg when compared to any standard A-segment car. 

To keep the kerb weight of the car under check, the Mila Blue concept has been crafted using high-strength steel, aluminium castings and extrusions and carbon fibre components.  While one of the easiest solution in reducing the weight of the car is to make it out of carbon fibre like most supercars are, but being a small car, costing has to be as low as possible and carbon fibre isn’t cheap by any imagination. For this purpose the boffins at Magna Steyr followed an unconventional methodology, like for example, they replaced plastic interior trims with structural parts suitably designed with laminable, visually attractive surfaces. They also experimented with various materials like aluminium, magnesium and composite materials to deliver cost-effective, innovative lightweight modules. Furthermore the doors are 40 per cent lighter than in comparison to conventional doors. This has been accomplished by employing composite sandwich materials with honeycomb cell paper in between, and by making the door inner panel structural instead of decorative. Also, the body, interiors and other components of the Mila Blue concept have been put together Magna’s various adhesives, rivets, and welding processes. 

Another characteristic on which the engineers focused was to keep its emissions as low as possible. The Mila Blue employs an alternative drive system, a compressed natural gas hybrid drive that achieves a carbon footprint of less than 49g CO2/km. The carbon footprint is further reduced to less than 36g CO2/km, when the powerplant is run on biogas. The car has 9kg of CNG storage capacity and the fuel tank has been crafted from carbon fibre for weight reduction. Power is transmitted to the rear-wheels via an automatic manual transmission as seen on the Maruti Celerio. Another benefit of its 670kg kerb weight is that the Mila Blue concept can run on the 12V-based electric motor while crawling along in stop-and-go traffic or speeds up to 30kmph. The car also features start-stop system to further boost its fuel efficiency.