Ford working on mass-market carbon fiber components to save weight, improve efficiency

Jeffrey N. Ross — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 08:29:00 EST

Carbon fiber has been in use for many years in the automotive industry in the name of performance, but Ford is trying to bring this lightweight material to the masses in the name of fuel economy. As a part of the German-funded Hightech.NRW project that began in 2010, Ford and Dow Automotive Systems have been trying to come up with a way to make carbon fiber feasible for everyday cars.

To demonstrate how important carbon fiber could be in non-performance-car applications, Ford installed a carbon fiber reinforced plastic hood on the Focus wagon shown above. Ford says carbon fiber is five times stronger than steel yet is just one-third the weight. This prototype hood weighs about half of what a conventional steel hood would weigh, and it still passes all of the safety needs required from a vehicle including dent resistance, pedestrian protection and during frontal crashes.

CFRP parts are apparently more time consuming to paint, so the project is also trying to find a faster way to finish the parts while keeping the same quality standards in place for steel components.

CFRP is an ideal material to use on hybrids and EVs, but Ford also has a plan to reduce the weight of its vehicles by about 750 pounds each by the end of the decade. Currently, resources and production methods make carbon fiber an expensive material, so the biggest test will be getting these costs down to make it economical for use in a sub-$20,000 car. There's no word how much this prototype hood cost Ford to produce, but in a day where automakers are trying to squeeze every last pound out of a car's curb weight, carbon fiber could become a very important material in future vehicles.

Scroll down for Ford's press release.

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Ford working on mass-market carbon fiber components to save weight, improve efficiency originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 08:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BMW leaks first-gen X5 made of carbon fiber

Noah Joseph — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:27:00 EST

Filed under: Concept Cars, SUV, Crossover, BMW

BMW has been making some headlines over the past few months with its commitment to carbon fiber construction, opening a joint-venture production facility in Washington State and teasing the upcoming Megacity EV as the first mass-produced carbon fiber vehicle. But there's always a back story to the headlines.

As you might have guessed, BMW has been toying around with the lightweight construction material for some time, seeing just how far it could push the envelop and what practical applications it could have. In this case, it turns out that, back around 2003, the Bavarian automaker re-constructed a first-gen X5 sport-ute with a carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) unibody. Every panel on the X5 was replaced with CFRP, save the doors which retained their conventional steel construction. The result was a weight savings of 440 pounds, without - according to BMW - sacrificing structural rigidity and crash-worthiness.

Of course the carbon X5 was never put into production, but it reportedly underwent some 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) of testing, and the knowledge gleaned will surely find its way into BMW's production vehicles in the future.

[Source: BMW Blog]

BMW leaks first-gen X5 made of carbon fiber originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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