Automotive 3D Printing Market - Forecast(2024 - 2030)

Automotive 3D Printing Market Overview

Automotive 3D printing market is expected to reach $1.8 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 11.1% during the forecast period 2021-2026, owing to increasing research and development activities and innovations which is strengthening the automotive industry worldwide. Similarly, with a huge capital investment in automotive technology, several manufacturers are focusing on light weight vehicles to decrease the fuel consumption and low emission. Among all the R&D activities, 3D printing in automotive has come up with a rapid pace and gaining attention in the global automotive industry for rapid prototyping. According to the Chinese Passenger Car Association (CPCA), demand for electric car is growing progressively. This is due to the rising development of lightweight automobile parts utilizing 3D automobile printing technologies. The Chinese Government has rendered the development of additive manufacturing technologies a priority in the region. International companies are urged to create subsidiaries, although some domestic companies are also driven by government policies. Collaboration with other industry leader companies to incorporate various technology such as stereo lithography, selectrive laser sintering and digital light processing into their manufacturing process and create innovative product innovations would help them achieve strategic edge over their competitors.

Automotive 3D Printing Market Report Coverage

The report: “Automotive 3D Printing Market – Forecast (2021-2026)”, by IndustryARC covers an in-depth analysis of the following segments of the Automotive 3D Printing market

By Material: Metals, Polymer, Others (Ceramic and Glass)
By Technology: Stereolithography, Selective Laser Sintering, Electron Beam Melting (EBM), Fused Disposition Modeling, Laminated Object Manufacturing, Three Dimensional Inject Printing, Others
By Application: Prototyping & Tooling, Manufacturing Complex Components, Research, Development & Innovation, Others
By Geography: North America (U.S, Canada, Mexico), South America(Brazil, Argentina and others), Europe(Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Russia and Others), APAC(China, Japan India, SK, Aus and Others), and RoW (Middle east and Africa)

Key Takeaways

• Automotive 3D printing in North America is growing at significant rate owing to the stringent governmental regulations regarding automobiles and auto parts are regulated through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 
• The exceptional growth prospects of the electric vehicles market is a major growth factor for the 3D printing automotive market owing to its importance in electric vehicles. 
• The automotive OEMs are partnering with the leading 3D printing companies like Stratatsys, Shining 3D, SLM Solutions are largely concentrating on the technologies like stereo lithography, fused deposition modeling, and Laser sintering.
• Automotive 3D Printing top 10 companies include Stratasys Inc., 3D System, Materialise NV, Renishaw PLC, SLM Solutions, ExOne, Envisiontec Inc., EOS,   Arcam AB, Autodesk, Inc., among others.

Automotive 3D Printing Market Segment Analysis - By Application

Manufacturing complex components is growing at a highest CAGR of 12.1% in the forecast period. Complex components with internal cavities require multiple subcomponents held together by a variety of processes in the standard subtractive manufacturing process. As 3D printing is in nature an additive, it can create identical parts as single objects, allowing for less inspections and improved efficiency in the workflow. With Additive Manufacturing, designs with complex geometries only distribute build material where conformity with automotive performance standards is strategically necessary. 3D-printed pieces often weigh less than half of the weight of their cast or machined counterparts. A single click away from the mouse dramatically attenuates the design process with on-the-fly alterations. Moreover, early adopters used one-of-a-kind printed prototypes for wind tunnel testing in the automotive industry. In addition additive Manufacturing processes provide cost-effective alternatives to traditional automotive component manufacturing, especially complex and unique parts. Further additive manufacturing helps companies to create complex designs that require fewer parts for these components to be produced. As a result, companies may reduce the assembly time and also experience a decrease in quality problems. Delphi, an Irish tier 1 supplier to the automotive industry, used a metal 3D printing method known as Selective Laser Melting to produce a single piece aluminium diesel pump. With this, the company achieved a remarkable reduction in the number of parts available for the pump, thereby avoiding a few post-processing steps and simplifying the assembly process. The end result was a finished product of higher quality as it reduced the low-time fluid and is less vulnerable to leakage, with lower manufacturing costs. Hence these factors are analysed to drive the market in the forecast period 2020-2025.

Automotive 3D Printing Market Segment Analysis - By Technology

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) in automotive 3D Printing is growing at a CAGR of 13.5% in the forecast period. Selective Laser Sintering is an additive manufacturing or 3d printing technology that can be used for processing many types of materials such as polymers, metals, ceramics, and composites to create complex parts. It's areas of applications include automotive, aerospace tooling, biomedical as well as architecture. In addition SLS technology based 3d printing helps in building much stronger and durable prototypes than other technologies, thus causing its demands over applications ranging from low volume production to rapid prototyping of automotive parts and components. Such factors have been helping this technology towards boosting its growth in the 3d printing automotive market in the forecast period. Moreover, this technology has been considered to be one of the fastest as well as widely used 3d printing  process due to it scalability of printing multiple automotive parts simultaneously, thus maximizing the build space for the auto manufacturers.  Due to this, auto manufacturers are able to build high amount of parts and fixtures within less time intervals, thus boosting their productivity standards. Since this technology has been helping in reducing additional costs for automakers, many major automotive companies have been highly shifting towards adopting selective laser sintering 3d printing for building vehicle parts more easily along with cost efficiency. As a part of this, recently FAW-Volkswagen Automotive Co. Ltd, a joint venture between FAW Group, Volkswagen and Audi revealed about producing prototypes for more than 5,000 parts a year deploying laser sintering technology. Further deployment of 3d printing technology across the automotive industry helped in reducing the overhead operational costs along with speeding up the design iteration process, thus driving its demands in the automotive sector in the forecast period 2021-2026.

Automotive 3D Printing Market Segment Analysis- By Geography

Automotive 3D printing in North America is growing at significant rate of 12.2% CAGR through 2026 owing to the stringent governmental regulations regarding automobiles and auto parts are regulated through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Such regulations are related to improve the vehicle safety standards as well as reduce the vehicle emissions. Such factors have been creating high deployments of electric vehicles in the country, in order to comply with such laws, thereby boosting the market growth of 3d printing technology. Moreover, rising growth of automobiles has caused the various automakers to shift towards advanced technologies in order to increase mass production of vehicles more efficiently within lesser time intervals along with reducing fuel consumption. As a part of this, one of the major U.S auto manufacturer, General Motors had invested in Autodesk’s software with 3d printing in effort to produce lighter vehicle parts through mass reduction and parts consolidation. Deploying of such lighter auto parts eventually helps in cutting the high fuel consumption costs for the customers, thus driving the automobiles demands. Such initiatives have been helping in boosting the growth of 3d printing in automotive market in the forecast period 2021-2026.

Automotive 3D Printing Market Drivers

Impressive Growth of Electric Vehicles 

The market for electric vehicles is growing all across the globe, however, the electric vehicle market growth in China is quite significant. The exceptional growth prospects of the electric vehicles market is a major growth factor for the 3D printing automotive market owing to its growing importance in electric vehicles. 3D printing is seen as a solution by the OEMs in the global market. The automotive OEMs are partnering with the leading 3D printing companies like Stratatsys, Shining 3D, SLM Solutions are largely concentrating on the technologies like stereo lithography, fused deposition modeling, and Laser sintering. These technologies have high experience on the creating cost effective and composite parts that aid to improve the efficiency of the vehicles. 

Growing Investments in 3D printing or additive manufacturing 

Global 3D Printing Automotive Market is gaining traction due to the huge funds towards research and development of manufacturing technologies and materials. New manufacturing processes are being deployed to satisfy the increasing demand of consumers. The automotive companies are poised to lead the technological transformation in manufacturing. In April 2018, BMW invested $12m in a new additive manufacturing campus, Located Munich, Germany. BMW states that it is already using additive manufacturing to make prototype components in Shenyang (China) and Rayong (Thailand). Going forward, it plans to integrate additive manufacturing more fully into the local production structure of China and allow small production runs for customizable components. The HP and Guangdong companies have disclosed a new production-grade Additive Manufacturing centre in Dali, Foshan China. The venture in 10 HP Multi Jet Fusion 3D printing systems and is HP’s largest deployment of production-grade 3D printing in the Asia Pacific. Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) and Privately Owned Enterprises (POEs) together have planned to operate in China by establishing joint ventures involving foreign. The JVs in particular have an advantage in leveraging their global platform in creating vehicles, particularly for the Chinese market.

Automotive 3D Printing Market Challenges

Low speed Production

Additive manufacturing is facing speed of production challenges, which limits mass production potential. Advances are being made in additive manufacturing processes such that companies can create reliably unique parts and mass produce them and create custom parts for individual markets. The additive manufacturing technique is a game changer in industries where higher production costs are outweighed by the additional value generated by the manufacturing technique. However, the automotive industry is a high volume industry that requires great production speeds to make profits. The low production speeds of the additive manufacturing technique is seen a major impediment for wider adoption of the manufacturing technique in the automotive industry. In an attempt to tackle this challenge, high speed additive manufacturing has become an important area of research.

Automotive 3D Printing Market Landscape

Technology launches, acquisitions, Expansions, Partnerships and R&D activities are key strategies adopted by players in the automotive 3D printing market. In 2019, the market of automotive 3D printing industry outlook has been fragmented by several companies.  Automotive 3D Printing top 10 companies include Stratasys Inc., 3D System, Materialise NV, Renishaw PLC, SLM Solutions, ExOne, Envisiontec Inc., EOS,   Arcam AB, Autodesk, Inc., among others.

Acquisitions/Technology Launches

In 2020 Rimac launched the Rimac Design Challenge. The winning design was the Rimac Scalatan, a spectacular concept by Max Schneider which offered a unique window into what our world and the transport industry could look like in 2080. The car comes with an aerodynamic carbon-nanotube graphene outer surface that sits on top of a generative-design chassis made from 3D printed titanium graphite.

In June 2019, In order to make the benefit of advertised fuels available to widely valued consumers around the world, HPCL has figured out the solution by offering aftermarket fuel performance enhancing additives in compact small pouches. Vinner Petrol Plus and Vinner Diesel Plus will be available on the market in different sizes of pouches.

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