Chery and HBIS Announce Major Breakthrough: 2400 MPa Ultra-High-Strength Automotive Steel
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Chery and HBIS have jointly developed 2400 MPa hot-formed steel, setting a new benchmark for ultra-high-strength automotive materials and advancing China’s core industrial capabilities.
On December 5, Chery Automobile and HBIS Group officially unveiled their jointly developed 2400 MPa ultra-high-strength hot-formed steel, marking a significant leap for China’s automotive materials sector in the ultra-high-strength category. The achievement underscores China’s rapid progress and growing self-reliance in core foundational materials.
Hot-formed steel is a critical material for both vehicle safety and weight reduction, commonly used in A/B pillars, door impact beams, door rings, floor crossmembers, and other key load-bearing and crash-resistant structures. Historically, mainstream materials in the automotive industry have ranged between 1300–1800 MPa, and raising strength while maintaining toughness, stability, and formability has long been a central technical challenge.
The newly developed 2400 MPa hot-formed steel significantly surpasses current industry norms while preserving manufacturability and processing stability. Compared with traditional materials, it offers three notable advantages:
- Substantial strength increase, further improving the impact resistance of high-safety components.
- Higher strength enables thinner gauges, opening greater potential for overall vehicle lightweighting.
- Improved toughness and formability, addressing the long-standing issues of brittleness and processing difficulty in ultra-high-strength steels.
The material has already undergone prototype trials, vehicle-level testing, and multiple rounds of validation in door impact beam applications. Results show stable mechanical performance, a well-controlled processing window, and high dimensional accuracy—indicating that it is ready for real-world mass-production use in high-strength safety components.
Looking ahead, the material is expected to expand to additional structural applications, including door rings, longitudinal beams, and crossmembers.
