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Is Carbon Fiber Going Mainstream?
cartechboy (2660665) writes "To date, carbon fiber has been expensive and presents different production challenges than traditional steel and aluminum. But now it seems as if the advanced material is about to become truly mainstream--BMW has announced it plans to triple carbon fiber reinforced plastic output at its Moses Lake facility in Washington state. Currently, the SGL Group plant, a joint venture partner of BMW Group, has the production capacity for about 3,000 tons of carbon fiber per annum. Two productions lines are currently going with the output dedicated to BMW's i3 and i8 plug-in vehicles. SGL is already working on a third and fourth production line which would double production to 6,000 tons per year, but a fifth and sixth are on the way, set to triple capacity to 9,000 tons every year. This extra output won't be reserved exclusively for BMW's i range. Several future BMW models will make use of the lightweight material. Now the only question is how long before carbon fiber vehicle construction becomes as common as aluminum?"
Yes
Only with hipsters.
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Carbon fiber is the least recyclable material ever.
No doubt they will claim they are recycling it in some unholy process, but it would be far more environmentally friendly to produce the raw stock.
Now steel and aluminum are highly recyclable. And cleanly too.
BMW... mainstream..?
Anway, tripling a small number is still a small number. Whether the numbers are small is impossible to judge from the summary.. or the article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
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OK, so a pedal bicycle is a very low powered road vehicle, but the same equation applies. To achieve a better power to weight ratio, you can either increase power or decrease weight - and decreased weight has the added bonus of lower loads on suspension and tyres in fast corners.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
You mean Italian chrome?
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My cane is made of carbon fiber, so I would say carbon fiber is already "mainstream". What they are talking about is it becoming a commodity. Not just mainstream, but ubiquitous.
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It'd be interesting to see how they plan to do this. The main obstacle to mass production using CFRP (or any fiber-reinforced plastics) is that it takes much longer to put fibers in a mould, impregnate them and have the mixture dry to the point where it can be removed from the mould, than it would to stamp a sheet of aluminium into shape.
BMW has already been putting CF into weight-sensitive areas of the car, like the roof panels on certain models. Up high is one of the worst places to carry weight from a vehicle dynamics perspective; it makes nearly every aspect of vehicle handling worse.
One practical difficulty of CF for general automotive use is that it's not really repairable.
Of course, modern autobody repair is often about replacing affected panels with pristine replacements (either new or from junk yard cars), as opposed to trying to repair an existing panel. So, in that sense, CF might be a fine choice, as the lack of reparability is in practice a non-issue.
BMW is already gluing cars together -- for almost 10 years they have been building the front clip on certain models out of aluminum, and in effect gluing it to the remainder of the unibody, which is conventional steel.
Also, BMW has been designing recyclability into its cars also for at least 15 years. I seem to recall that the E46 3 series was something like 90% recoverable.
I don't expect they would turn away from their recyclability commitment, so they must have a plausible plan for how they would like to apply it to CF parts.
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Roughly, on the same amount of stored electrical energy.
So carbon fibre body components have a lot of potential to help make EVs range-competitive with fossil fuel cars.
We are definitely within reach of EVs that are practical for nearly every car driver.
1.5x better energy density batteries
1/3 vehicle weight reduction
1/3 price reduction
is all that's really needed from where we are now.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The world is not running out of carbon.
That doesn't mean you want to waste a lot of energy generating non-recyclable carbon fiber products that will fill up landfills.
The amount of energy saved by building lighter vehicles dwarfs the amount saved through recycling.
I'm guessing you aren't aware of the energy savings from recycling aluminum. Recycling aluminum requires roughly 5% of the energy required to create it from bauxite. Furthermore you can recycle aluminum multiple times whereas you effectively cannot recycle carbon fiber at all. (technically it is possible but economically it is not) Much or even all of the fuel savings through lighter weight vehicles will be given back when the product needs to be disposed of.
Now the only question is how long before carbon fiber vehicle construction becomes as common as aluminum?
And just how mainstream are all aluminum bodied cars? There are several that have hoods and trunks that are. But for the most part only higher end cars make use of it. The Z06 corvette uses an aluminum frame with some carbon fiber body panels. The ZR1 also uses an aluminum frame with more carbon fiber. Nissan NSX used aluminum bodies. As far as I know , those are the cheapest cars you can get that are aluminum. Carbon fiber after market parts are very mainstream already. I see all kinds of cars that people replaced the stock hoods and front, rear bumper covers with carbon fiber.
While not main stream, the Consulier GTP was the first production carbon fiber car. Actually it was a carbon fiber monocoque body. ANd built in the late 1980's/early 1990's. It was panned as being one the the ugliest cars built. But I would have loved to have owned one.
High temp burning should produce decent energy output without pollution. IF they don't use some goofy plastic it can be burned hot enough and well enough to not be a problem.
Sometimes recycling is just not worth the effort.
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Since my carbon fiber bike is 12 years old at this point.
Mostly random stuff.
It's not THAT far from mainstream, but...it's not quite mainstream, and most likely never will be due to the ridiculous amount of labor required to make a CF part. The first time an economy car goes on sale with a CF part on it, then we'll talk.
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You can bet on almost all aluminum in cars being replaced by carbon fiber. The one exception being engine parts as that seems to be more difficult. But as far as reclaiming carbon fiber after the cars life ends I suspect that carbon fiber could be crushed and shredded as an additive for concrete or asphalt and thus sequestered over and over again for centuries. Who knows? Maybe we will see 3d printed homes created with shredded carbon fiber put in place by quadcopters or bots.
6,000 tons of Carbon Fiber sounds like a lot until you compare it to total US car sales of more than 16 million units. That's about one and a third pound of Carbon Fiber per car.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/0...
Guess what the principle means of making it?
You guessed it oil or coal tar.
" but if it gets a crack or gouge in it, the frame can't be mended... it has to be tossed"
Calfree has been repairing CF frames and components for over a decade. I have no idea why you're claiming it's not repairable.
Please help metamoderate.
Not true - you an repair a carbon bike. Calfee will be happy to do it for you
http://calfeedesign.com/repair...
It was in squash racquets and top end consumer bikes twenty years ago. The highly protected US car industry is just slow to catch up with the mainstream.