Submitting Your Content

About

WorldAutoSteel will consider appropriate articles from expert sources for publication on our AHSS Insights blog.  In order to be considered, you must meet the requirements set forth below.  Please keep in mind, however, that we do not pay for, or charge for, posting guest blogs.  But we are more than willing to consider articles that are relevant to educating on best practices and new processes in the forming and joining of Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS) in vehicle applications.

If you still have questions about being a Guest Blogger for WorldAutoSteel after reading this page, you may contact the AHSS Guidelines Editor, Lori Jo Vest

Fundamentals

Please keep in mind the following fundamentals before you start writing your blog.

  • Your submission must contain references to Advanced High-Strength Steel (AHSS) in vehicle applications. Note that the name of our blog is AHSS Insights, therefore, readers will be expecting to expand their AHSS knowledge base.
  • Your submission must be geared towards a technical audience, with appropriate data references. Our audiences include automotive engineers that specialize in design, materials, manufacturing and the environment.  We generally do not accept thought-starter type guest blogs.
  • Your submission must not be a marketing piece for your organization, proprietary products or services, nor should it contain marketing messages and solicitations.  Our readers are smart people.  They will appreciate and gain much more insight into your company by simply demonstrating your expertise and showing your products’ purpose in AHSS use, than they would in a sales pitch.
  • It should contain information pertinent to our audiences on an aspect of AHSS, such as AHSS characteristics, use, metallurgy, forming or joining. It also may address vehicle or steel industry life cycle assessment or other environmental issues related to automotive and AHSS use.
  • Your submission must include graphic references. You may decide what kind of graphics you would like to add such as charts, videos, infographics, etc. We welcome videos as long as they do not include a sales pitch. Graphics need to be submitted as PNG or SVG files, and videos must be a standard format, such as MP4 or WMV.

 

Submission Requirements

Please meet the following submission requirements before you submit your entry for consideration.

  • Submissions should be approximately 1,000 words in length, and include graphics.
  • Please include a title.
  • Graphics should be provided as separate 72 dpi (PNG or SVG) files, if possible, and sourced appropriately, especially if you do not specifically own the rights. Videos should be 720p resolution.
  • Please clearly provide any reference sources in the following format: Author, full title of the work, year published, and if available and it will add to the blog’s content value, provide an internet link to the work.
  • Please notify us with your intention to submit with an brief abstract of the information you will cover. This will help us determine if it is a good fit and enable us to potentially provide provisional approval.
  • Your first draft must be submitted a minimum of 30 business days prior to any agreed upon publish date. This allows our team to have ample time for review, give you feedback and pursue any required further editing. It also provides time for translation to our Chinese blog edition.
  • As your blog will be translated to the Chinese language and published on our channels in China, please do not use English jargon that will be difficult to translate.

We will notify you in advance as to when your entry is scheduled to publish. We strongly encourage you to use your social contact network to share the blog article. Your shares should include our blog hashtag, #AHSSblog.

 

Submitting Video and Animation Assets

We are always looking for video and animations to help support existing articles with visual information.  If you think you have something that would enhance an article, please contact us at the email link above.  You can send us a link to what you have, and we will review it.  Note, the video must be owned by you in order to be considered and not contain any sales pitches.  If we agree to use it, we’ll need to receive the original video file so that it can be uploaded directly to our site.  You/your company will receive full citation as a the source of the video.  Have a look at our Roll Forming page to see an example of how we have used a video received from Shape Corp.

 

We look forward to receiving your submission. It is our pleasure to collaborate on AHSS education with you. Thank you!

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About

About Us WorldAutoSteel, the automotive group of the World Steel Association, is comprised of 17 major global steel producers from around the world. Our mission is to advance and communicate steel’s unique ability to meet the automotive industry’s needs and challenges...
A Look at the New EU Legislation for Cars and Vans

A Look at the New EU Legislation for Cars and Vans

Blog

We’ve been monitoring the evolution of vehicle legislation in the world closely, advocating for life cycle thinking to be considered for the next generation of regulations. The European Union has been actively pursuing Post 2020 regulations, looking hard at CO2 emissions reduction. On 15 May 2019, the new EU CO2 emission legislation for cars and vans for the post-2021 period entered into force, with the objective of contributing to decarbonisation and modernisation of Europe’s road transport sector in line with the EU’s commitments under the Paris International Climate Agreement. The main instrument to achieve this is a further reduction of tailpipe CO2 emissions from new cars by 37.5% by 2030 compared with the 2021 baseline as well as providing incentives to car manufacturers to sell more low-emission vehicles (<50gCO2/km) in the EU.

The direction of EU policy appears clear: cars need to emit less CO2. Others are questioning the focus on emissions reduction in the use phase of a vehicle and whether this will result in overall emissions savings. In fact, improvements in the driving phase could be cancelled out by increased emissions from the production and later the recycling of the vehicle as manufacturers turn to alternative materials and powertrains that could be more energy intensive to produce.

So, what is the solution?

Perhaps it is already in the recently adopted EU. The legislative text is for all intents and purposes a continuation of the existing CO2 emission legislation with more stringent tailpipe-based targets and verification. Yet it features one notable new element: the idea of reporting on the life cycle emissions of cars.

Article 7 – Monitoring and reporting of average emissions
10. The Commission shall no later than 2023 evaluate the possibility of developing a common Union methodology for the assessment and the consistent data reporting of the full life-cycle CO2 emissions of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles that are placed on the Union market. The Commission shall transmit to the European Parliament and to the Council that evaluation, including, where appropriate, proposals for follow-up measures, such as legislative proposals.

By 2023, the European Commission is tasked with assessing the feasibility of creating an EU methodology for harmonised and consistent reporting of full vehicle life cycle CO2 emissions.

Figure 1: Average historical CO2 emission values and adopted CO2 standards for new passenger cars in the EU. All CO2 values refer to New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) measurements. Source: ICCT

With a reporting framework of this kind, regulators could better anticipate the impact of changes in the vehicle fleet on overall emissions and identify the appropriate policy instruments, thereby being able to future-proof the legislation.

Going forward, the European Commission is expected to undertake a feasibility study to identify possible ways to measure vehicle life cycle emissions in a consistent and harmonised way. The conclusions of this work and any possible recommendations for implementing the methodology into EU law would be part of a report to the European Parliament in time for a review of the Regulation by 2023.

As life cycle assessments are already used by a wide range of stakeholders in the automotive sector, it will also be up to them to contribute to this work and help ensure future debates on the best way to decarbonise the EU road transport sector can draw on their experience.