Battery, Hybrid,
and ICE Vehicles

Where Our Coatings Are Used

Use Cases

Chassis and Suspension Hardware

Subframe bolts, control arm hardware, shock and strut mounts, sway bar links, suspension brackets, and the fasteners that hold a unibody or body-on-frame chassis together over the life of the vehicle.

Brake System Hardware

Caliper bracket hardware, brake line clips and brackets, parking brake components, ABS sensor mounts, and the small steel components that make up the brake assembly behind every wheel.

Powertrain and Drive Unit Hardware

Engine and transmission fasteners, motor and inverter hardware, axle and CV joint components, differential hardware, and the actuators and sensors that keep the powertrain running across ICE, hybrid, and BEV architectures.

Battery and High-Voltage Hardware

Bus bars, terminal lugs, module interconnects, battery pack enclosure hardware, high-voltage cable management, and the contactor and disconnect hardware inside hybrid and battery-electric vehicles.

Body, Closures, and Interior Hardware

Door, hood, and trunk hinges, latch hardware, seat slide rails, sunroof and moonroof components, mirror brackets, and the interior trim fasteners that face the customer every day.

What These Finishes Do

Key Benefits

Severe Under-Vehicle Corrosion Resistance

Plating that holds up against road salt, brine, and the moisture cycles that under-vehicle hardware faces every winter, meeting the 480-hour and 720+ hour ASTM B117 salt-spray requirements major passenger-vehicle OEMs publish.

Hydrogen Embrittlement Control

In-house relief baking on the high-strength steel fasteners and structural bolts that hold the chassis, suspension, and powertrain together, scheduled within the time windows ASTM F1940 and OEM specifications require.

Galvanic Compatibility

Process selection that prevents dissimilar-metal corrosion in the increasingly mixed-material assemblies modern vehicles use, where high-strength steel, aluminum, copper, and stainless components meet at every fastener.

OEM and IATF 16949 Compliance

Process control aligned with IATF 16949 and the corrosion, adhesion, dimensional, and cyclic-corrosion specifications published by major OEMs and their Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers.

Electrical Conductivity

Low and stable contact resistance on the bus bars, lugs, interconnects, and sensor terminals that move current through hybrid and battery-electric vehicle architectures.

Environmental Compliance

Trivalent chromium passivation and fully hexavalent-chromium-free finishes that meet RoHS, REACH, and the End-of-Life Vehicle directive that drives passenger-vehicle supply chain decisions.

Protective Coatings for Passenger Vehicles

A modern passenger vehicle is a tightly engineered system where every plated component matters. The fastener holding the subframe to the body has to last through ten Michigan winters. The bus bar inside a battery pack has to move hundreds of amps without drifting. The door hinge has to open and close cleanly through ten thousand cycles. And every one of those parts has to come off a supplier’s line at exactly the cost, exactly the spec, and exactly the volume the OEM scheduled it for. The plating is part of how that engineering actually holds.

CMC supplies the protective finishes that passenger-vehicle OEMs and their tier suppliers specify across battery-electric, hybrid, and internal-combustion programs. Our menu covers the full vehicle: zinc-nickel for chassis, suspension, and brake hardware that lives under salt and moisture; tin for the bus bars, interconnects, and high-voltage hardware moving current through hybrid and BEV systems; zinc for general structural and interior hardware; and phosphate for the structural parts that get painted before they ship. We run IATF 16949-aligned process control, trivalent chromium passivation, fully hexavalent-chromium-free chemistries, and in-house hydrogen embrittlement relief baking for the high-strength fasteners that modern passenger vehicle assemblies depend on.

Across four facilities and 17 processing lines, we have the scale to support mass-production programs and the engineering depth to navigate the electrification transition with you. Send us a print or a part description and we’ll match the right process to the geometry, the operating environment, and the OEM specification your program runs to.

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Supplying parts to a passenger vehicle program?

Send us a drawing, a specification, or a part description. We’ll recommend the right finish for the chassis, the brake system, the powertrain, the battery pack, or the closures and interior hardware your program needs, scoped to the OEM spec and the volume your supply chain runs to.