Hyundai Elantra and Adhesives

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November 19, 2015

The reveal of the 2017 Hyundai Elantra at the LA Auto Show yesterday included an emphasis on something that isn’t ordinarily spoken of in such settings:

Structural adhesives.

Yet during his portion of the introduction of the sixth-generation Elantra, Mike O’Brien, vice president of corporate and product planning for Hyundai Motor America, said that he happens to be a pilot and so is greatly appreciative of technologies that can be strong, safe and light, and that airframes are transitioning from riveting to bonding.

Similarly, the engineers who developed this new car were also keenly interested in strength, safety and low mass, so this new car makes extensive use of structural adhesives.

And “extensive” means “extensive.” They’ve increased the amount of bonding on stress points of the chassis and in other places where they determined that the spot welds needed reinforcement by 40 times compared to the fifth-generation model.

The amount of advanced high-strength steel in the car is also increased. The outgoing model: 21%. The 2017 Elantra: 53%, including hot-stamped grades in the A- and B-pillars.

A consequence is that the new car has a 29.5% stiffer torsional rigidity and 25.3% greater bending strength.

We’ll learn more about the Elantra—which is the sixth best-selling car on the planet—early next year. But clearly, when they’re looking at a car right down to the bonding, it probably has some impressive ride and handling and NVH characteristics.