Repairer Driven News – Ducker Carlisle discusses mega-casting’s reshaping of the vehicle value chain

By Lurah Lowery on February 13, 2026
Collision Repair | Market Trends

A recent whitepaper from Ducker Carlisle explores how mega-casting in vehicle manufacturing reshapes the value chain, both in vehicle design for lightweighting and in the factory for assembly.

Leonard Ling, Ducker Carlisle’s automotive expert, writes that the winners won’t be defined by who casts the biggest piece, but by who can master the interfaces while designing for manufacturability, serviceability, and cost from day one. Those interfaces include large cast nodes, extrusions, and sheet structures.

In a conversation with Repairer Driven News, Ling and Bertrand Rakoto shared some details behind mega-casting production.

Rakoto used Ford’s capital investment in mega-casting as an example of converting existing assembly lines to adapt to the new production.

“Ford just invested in the Louisville factory to go into mega-casting; it’s a $2 billion investment into the factory to replace existing systems and put up the new systems,” he said. “The reason also is that you need big areas for the mega-castings because the machines that are coming up for creating those parts require not only space for themselves, but also you need to have big cranes within the installations to be able to move the machines and dyes.

“When you use dyes for molding and doing the mega-casting, you need to be able to move those dyes around, change them when necessary, and so on. For that, you need a very high roof or isolating factories, and you need a lot of space to install those cranes and move the machines around.”

Mega-casting saves OEMs time and money, according to Rakoto and Ling.

Simplification of the vehicle architecture, or “unboxed type of vehicles,” has three main modules that are assembled separately and joined together, Rakoto said. That way, OEMs can have different types of working stations throughout each of their factories.

Ling added that mega-casting is mostly used on the rear end of vehicles.

“On the front side, it’s another story because on the front side, you have more considerations for the crash management,” he said. “We see two pieces, so the left piece and the right piece are separate. So each one integrates on each side. You can integrate a shock tower in the longitudinal, but it can be two pieces for the left and the right.”

Ling said emerging OEMs or brands especially save money by utilizing mega-casting at their greenfield plants by starting from scratch in setting up the workspaces with equipment, rather than converting existing sites.

Rakoto noted that lightweighting is on the minds of automakers who are going for Gen-3 mega-castings.

“The reason is that Gen-1 mega-castings were not particularly lighter than the steel parts they were replacing,” he said. “Now we start to see technology improving in the last 10 years. We start to see improvements in terms of weight.”

When asked how mega-castings play into collision repair strategies and what repairers can expect, Rakoto said Tesla is the only OEM at this time that makes specific replacement parts for mega-casting pieces. However, he said if a mega-casting is broken, it’s likely the vehicle will be totaled.

“So far, the financial effort to replace the mega-casting can be done, maybe, within the first two years of the lifetime of the vehicle,” he said. “After that, the value of the vehicle makes it something that does not make sense. Even if we are making the replacement or the repair of mega-casting more efficient than it was at the beginning, it’s still quite a burden. There are some repair procedures now that are being put together by the carmakers, but the goal is not really to look into replacing a mega-casting. It’s more about changing some areas where it’s broken, and we still have to learn a lot about the process and get some return on experience.”

Rakoto noted that smaller castings, such as multi-piece components, can be replaced, and it’s been known for at least 20 years how to fix or replace those parts within vehicles.

Ling added that automakers implement two-way mega-casting strategies.

“One way is that they’re improving the repairability of the mega-casting itself, so they improve the alloy to make it more weldable,” he said. “If there’s damage on the perimeter of the mega-casting, it’s very likely to be repairable today with welding or maybe some glue technology. In addition to the repairability of the mega-casting itself, they put more protection outside of the mega-casting component.

“Imagine the rear end of the vehicle. Before the crash hits the mega-casting, you have the bumper on the very outside of the vehicle. After the bumper, you have the crash can, and after the crash can, you have the longitudinal. Those parts are either bolted on or welded on, so you can easily replace them. After those zones are totally crashed, then the energy will come to the mega-casting, which means if the mega-casting is damaged, it’s a really bad crash.”

Ling writes in the whitepaper that joining has evolved from “make it stick” to “engineer the interface.”

“Today’s mixed-material strategies rely on adhesives to carry structural load, supported by self-piercing rivets or flow-drill screws where access allows,” he wrote. “Welding remains, but mostly for extrusion-to-extrusion joints away from critical cast surfaces. The new frontier is service. OEMs now design sacrificial extrusions that bolt to robust cast nodes, enabling sectioned repairs instead of full replacements. This reduces total-loss rates after moderate crashes and shortens turnaround time for insurers and repair shops.

“Mega-casting is less about consolidation and more about coordination. The era of ‘bigger parts’ is giving way to the era of smarter assemblies. Those who engineer for manufacturability, service, and sustainability together will define the next generation of automotive structures.”