Automakers race to lose weight
A Lamborghini Aventator is seen at the booth of Bugatti during the international motor show IAA (Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung) in Frankfurt/M, western Germany, on Sept. 14, 2011. Credit: Getty Images
Beneath the high ceilings of a factory in the wheat fields of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, Lamborghini engineers are building a new supercar. Called the Aventador, it has been described as the closest thing to a stealth fighter jet you'll see on the road.
It's also a high-profile symbol of a strategic battle taking shape in the auto industry. Silhouetted against grey walls, workers in black polo shirts adorned with Lamborghini's gold raging bull logo guide sheets of black material into a vacuum-controlled cutting machine, before pressing and shaping the pieces into huge moulds. These parts will make the chassis of the Aventador, which is one of the first cars to have its entire body built of carbon fiber composites, an alternative to metals prized by plane makers for their lightweight malleability and strength. The materials give designers "freedom to design aggressively," says Lamborghini's Technology Manager Massimiliano Corticelli.
The materials - plastics reinforced by synthetic fibers - will also allow the kind of performance so important to Lamborghini drivers: 100 km per hour in 2.9 seconds with a top speed of around 350 km per hour. But their potential value lies beyond the handful of people who can pay a starting price of $355,000 for a car that rolls off the assembly line at just 20 a week.
Partly as a consequence of emissions reduction targets, mass-market automakers need to produce lighter cars. For the next few years, automakers such as Peugeot, Fiat, Volkswagen and Daimler expect weight reductions to come largely from using aluminum. But composites are 30 percent lighter than aluminum and 50 percent lighter than steel. If car makers can get the price down - composites currently cost at least 10 times as much as aluminum and 30 times as much as steel, according to Volkswagen - they hope to be able to use them in the mass-market.
"We have been working on making cars lighter for several years, but the tightening up of regulation for reducing emissions by 2020 makes it necessary in reality to move towards breakthrough solutions," says Louis David, materials expert at French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen.
There is progress. Peugeot and other carmakers already make some small parts out of composite material but do not yet use the technology for large parts. But BMW, which plans by the end of 2013 to roll out electric cars with entire passenger cabins made from a composite known as carbon fiber reinforced plastic, is leading the race.
Helped by Germany's richest woman, Susanne Klatten, the luxury automaker has been building close ties with Europe's only supplier of carbon fiber technology; it consolidated its hold this week with a share purchase.
"So far, there is no carmaker that is banking on carbon fibers quite like BMW," says Reto Hess, who coordinates global car industry analysis for Credit Suisse's private banking arm.
Taking composites mass market won't be easy. The European Union wants to cut average carbon dioxide emissions of cars manufactured in the region by 33 percent by 2020 - to 95 grams per kilometer. Most mainstream European automakers say the cost of composites is too high to use them in whole cars any time soon.
Volkswagen's VW brand has the material in a prototype, but Ulrich Hackenberg, head of development of the VW brand, says finished parts cost between 30 and 50 euros per kg. That compares with only 1 euro for steel and 3 euros for aluminium. He thinks a reasonable target for the industry could be to bring this cost down to 15-20 euros.
Cars built from carbon fiber parts will have to meet the same safety criteria as conventional ones; composites can potentially cut a car's mass by half, says PSA's David. But on costs, he is blunt: "Today we believe that composites that are competitive for the automotive industry in terms of cost and production rhythm do not exist," he says. The company is taking "baby steps" in using the materials in vehicles that should be in showrooms by 2014-15, and he expects the technology to be much more widespread by 2018.
BMW isn't waiting. It won't disclose its investment, but according to German weekly Der Spiegel it has spent more than a billion euros on developing the technology and its new range of "i" electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. Whole cars made of carbon fiber composites will be available from 2013.
Its strategy is based on the view that trendsetting car buffs with deep pockets will develop a taste for electric cars, especially if prodded by government incentives such as exemptions from city center congestion charges. The company says the i3's bodywork will be 250-350 kg lighter than that of a conventional car of the same size. With a much lighter chassis, it hopes its traditional clientele of drivers could even desire a premium electric vehicle for city driving.
BMW finance chief Friedrich Eichiner says the company is already working to cut costs to a point where they will be level with aluminum. It's a goal that can only be achieved with economies of scale. "Costs are a function of the volumes - that remains the driver," Eichiner says.
To this end, BMW has already secured fiber production capacity which industry experts say is equivalent to what the entire car industry consumed last year. Since 2011, the company has sourced its carbon fiber reinforced plastics through a joint venture with Europe's only major producer of carbon fibers, German-based SGL Carbon signed in 2009.
To get an idea of the scale, it's worth a glance at SGL's production chain. Based in Wiesbaden, southwest Germany, the company gets precursor fibers, similar to those used in fleece clothing, from a joint venture with Mitsubishi Rayon in Japan. They are shipped for treatment - including baking at temperatures as high as 1,400 Celsius - to the United States. Then they go to Germany, for finishing.
SGL says its U.S. plant will eventually be able to churn out 3,000 tons of fiber per year. That compares with an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 tons used in all cars globally last year and about 35,000 tons across all industries.
Even so, BMW's CEO Norbert Reithofer has his sights set further into the future. The electric model range has an "enabling job to deliver because we want to use parts of this technology for our future models" in the series development, he says.
