Audi all-aluminum automobiles

"$90,000 Audi, all made out of aluminum" — twenty years of production by 2014.

Now you can say, well, what about aluminum in automobiles? They've been making all-aluminum Audis for twenty years. They made an all-aluminum Duesenberg in the 1930s, or a Pierce Arrow — there's a picture I have of JP Morgan standing next to his all-aluminum Pierce Arrow. But those were not consumer cars like a Model T. The Ford Taurus is still made out of steel. You can buy a $90,000 Audi, all made out of aluminum. And you're going to soon be able to buy a Ford F-150 that's not all aluminum — not the frame rails, they're still steel — but the body is going to be aluminum. They haven't announced the price. This summer they'll announce it.

The luxury-segment proof-of-concept that drove the early-1990s hype cycle.

Back in the early 90s I also had opinions about all-aluminum automobiles. People were predicting that, because of the price of gas, in five years all the cars would be all-aluminum vehicles. Audi was starting to come out with an all-aluminum vehicle. It's the same type of thing. People were talking all this great hype about the increase in the price of gas and how the aluminum vehicle was going to wipe out steel, and the steel mills were all going to fall apart, and no one would invest in the steel industry, they're totally foolish to do so. I used to say, we will not have all-aluminum vehicles for another twenty years. Everybody was just shocked, how could I say this.

Cited as a real but niche product proving the cost barrier — you can buy an all-aluminum Audi, but you can't buy an all-aluminum Ford Taurus at Taurus prices.

Yes, you can buy an all-aluminum Audi. We had all-aluminum Duesenbergs in the 1930s. But you wouldn't buy a Ford Taurus for twenty thousand dollars if it was made out of aluminum. It would be a forty-thousand-dollar Ford Taurus. Professor Clark had students doing doctoral theses on substitution of aluminum, making a Ford Taurus out of aluminum, and concluded it would only cost five hundred more. I said, what about fabricability? She had to go back and rewrite a page in her thesis. And she still didn't get the point. There are reasons why cars and ships and railroads are made out of steel and airplanes are made out of aluminum. We'll go through that in a little bit.

Mentioned in passing — Tom's "I wasn't talking about all-aluminum Audis at the time" referencing his 25-year-old forecast of when aluminum vehicles would arrive.

Yeah, they're coming out with it now. They're coming out with an all-aluminum truck, but we haven't seen the price yet, and I'll bet you it's a $40,000 truck even though the steel one you can get for $30,000. When I was saying all this twenty-five years ago, I was saying we wouldn't see all-aluminum vehicles for another twenty years. I wasn't talking about all-aluminum Audis at the time. I told you yesterday or the day before, anybody can build a $100,000 vehicle out of aluminum. How do you build a $25,000 vehicle out of aluminum?

Anyone can build a $100,000 aluminum car (Audi); building a $20,000 aluminum car is much harder (still steel-bodied Ford Taurus 25 years later).

I also talked about ceramics, because people would say we're going to use these other materials and steel is a dying material. It's not a dying material. I used to say, "In 20 years we'll still be driving steel cars." People said, "What about the all-aluminum Audi?" If you go buy an Audi, it'll be all aluminum — high performance, lightweight. And what will you pay for it? $100,000. If you buy a Ford Taurus, you'll pay $20,000 or $25,000. In the mid-90s I started saying anyone can build a $100,000 vehicle out of aluminum, but building a $20,000 vehicle out of aluminum is a lot more difficult. That's still true today. Twenty-five years ago I predicted we'd still be driving steel cars in 20 years, and here it is 25 years later and we are. All it took was understanding something about joining technology and the cost of materials.