Kobe steel has come up with a way to put aluminium and high tensile steel together without the aid of specialised rivets and other fasteners, pieced together using special robots. This technology could potentially reduce a midsize auto’s body weight from 250kg to 200kg.

The effort to make vehicles lighter has gained increased momentum recently, thanks to new and stricter emission regulations. In America, the automotive weights of large cars have to be lowered by 15 percent in order to meet 2025 regulation standards.

The new method by Kobe is definitely not the pioneering effort by automotive companies to shed weight, but the current methods, including utilising carbon fibre, generally cost far more, up to 10 times as much, than the new method proposed by Kobe.

Kobe hopes to apply the technology in new vehicles by 2021.