Aug 20, 2008

Advanced Hybrids to Use Lightweight Steel

A start-up company is attempting to pioneer a new era of automobile manufacturing in the same way its predecessor company did a century ago. Fisher Coachworks LLC says it plans to manufacture energy-optimized, lightweight hybrid vehicles using advanced materials and propulsion systems, as well as new manufacturing technologies. Fisher’s launch product will be the 40-foot Transit Bus that is nominally half the weight and gets twice the fuel economy of current hybrid buses on the market.

“The market is screaming for this product,” said CEO Gregory W. Fisher. “Our first product, the 40-foot Transit Bus, which represents approximately 70 percent of the buses utilized by transit authorities and fleets across the United States, is everything a 21^st century bus should be. It’s a bus that riders will want to ride, that drivers will enjoy driving and that operators will celebrate having in their fleets.”

The grandson of Alfred J. Fisher and one of the original Fisher brothers, Fisher formed the Fisher Body Company, in 1908, to take advantage of the shift from carriages to cars by building chassis designs from metal rather than wood. A hundred years later, Fisher Coachworks hopes to capitalize on the shift from traditional vehicle architectures and power trains to energy-optimized vehicles. The company plans to take advantage of technology advances in hybrid and battery systems, as well as an innovative and patented unibody design featuring special stainless steel alloy construction.

“Our vehicle concepts are based on the strength and durability of Nitronic stainless steel using low-cost manufacturing techniques,” Fisher said. “This alloy has more than three times the strength of regular steel and is almost impervious to corrosion and fatigue. While the alloy is more expensive than regular automotive steel, we use less raw material and can produce significantly lighter designs. Reduced vehicle mass is the critical enabler for fuel consumption and performance-optimized hybrid vehicles.”