To investigate the impacts of different core materials on the performance of automotive alternating current (AC) generators, a comparative study was carried out on three types of core materials, namely 50WW290, 50WW600 cold‑rolled non‑oriented silicon steels and SPCC cold‑rolled steel. The experimental results indicated that replacing the conventional SPCC cold‑rolled steel with 50WW290 and 50WW600 cold‑rolled non‑oriented silicon steels for the stator core of AC generators could enhance the electrical performance by 3.2%‑6.4%, reduce the thermal equilibrium temperature rise by 6%‑6.9%, and decrease the electromagnetic noise by 1‑8dB. It is demonstrated that 50WW290 and 50WW600 cold‑rolled non‑oriented silicon steels play a significant positive role in improving the overall performance of automotive AC generators.