Automakers don’t want to miss the boat on carbon fiber with all its light, high-strength goodness, but they sure don’t want to pay for the entire ship. President Obama seems to understand —and he should, given how he’s set the toughest emissions standards in history—and wants to spur private industry to make this magic material cheaper.
The Department of Energy is handing $70 million of your hard-earned tax dollars to a consortium of 122 companies, labs, universities, and nonprofits that promise to bring a breakthrough or two in composite manufacturing. Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota, and other partners—all led by the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, which is developing 3-D-printed carbon fiber—will pony up the rest of the $180 million during the five-year project. With engineers from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, 3M, General Electric and other leading companies at the helm, something smart is bound to happen. For automakers, the goal is to replace traditional steel and aluminum parts with carbon fiber so they can begin trimming weight in hidden areas—the kind that contain unsexy parts like tie rods and door latches. Really, no component is off-limits so long as costs come down.
- BMW, Audi, and German Consortium Developing Carbon Fiber That’s 90 Percent Cheaper
- If 3D-Printed Carbon Fiber is the Future, It’s Already Here
- Knitting a Little Magic: How Carbon Fiber Is Finally Getting Cheaper
Another publicly funded consortium in Germany, which includes investment by Audi and BMW, is trying to cut carbon fiber production costs by 90 percent within six years. Ford is already spending $10 million from a separate DOE grant to build and test several composite-filled Fusions that are 800 pounds lighter than stock. Toyota developed its own weaving process for the Lexus LF-A supercar and BMW is building carbon fiber bodies en masse (both companies formed their own carbon bond in 2012).
But pound for pound, carbon fiber costs roughly 20 times as much as steel, mainly because it’s so difficult to form and requires lengthy baking in autoclave ovens. For the nearer and longer term, expect automakers to continue blending various grades of high-strength steel—plus Ford’s new favorite alloy, aluminum—into most everything that’s not a Ford GT.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1C2QBZG
via Agya
