~>Carbon-Fiber Car ?
#1
11-25-2011, 10:01 AM
~>Carbon-Fiber Car ?
Member's, would you want a Carbon-Fiber Car ?
Post & let us know your thoughts/opinions...
I think it would be good to have a all Carbon-Fiber Corvette or ZL1 Camaro ?
Mercedes-Benz's Carbon-Fiber Sedan
Stuttgart is said to be planning a carbon-fiber four-door built like a supercar.
By Sam Smith Nov 23, 2011 7:38AM
Carbon-fiber is magical stuff. Here we have a simple, easily constructed composite construction material. If assembled properly -- the right proportion of woven carbon filaments and plastic resin -- it is both strong and flexible, light and durable. It's been used in aerospace applications for decades and has served as the backbone of the modern motorsport industry, underpinning everything from Formula 1 cars to the interior trim on your sport sedan.
Most important, this is a versatile material. (It's so versatile, in fact, that Lamborghini and Callaway Golf went to great lengths to develop a method of shooting it from a gun during construction. If that doesn't blow your mind, you didn't pay enough attention in science class.) Carbon-fiber is useful anywhere a light, strong composite is needed, but it tends to find a home in speed parts and sports cars -- typically high-dollar investments -- because it's so expensive to produce. Traditional thinking holds that, given enough time, the construction costs will come down and composites like this will make their way into more pedestrian machinery.
And now, if reports are to be believed, Mercedes-Benz is building a carbon-fiber-bodied four-door. More specifically, it's building a carbon E-class sedan, and it's going to sell it to the public.
This is really, really cool. <!--EndofExcerptMarker-->
The details can be found over at Automobile, where Georg Kacher, the magazine's European correspondent, does a deep dive on the subject. Suffice it to say that the car is Stuttgart's answer to the efficiency question currently ******* the industry; that is, a way to greatly increase efficiency by radically decreasing curb weight.
A complete, carbon-fiber-bodied E-class is said to save roughly 700 pounds over the current steel-bodied machine. Chop that much weight out of any car and fuel economy and performance go through the roof. Currently, the E-class Superlight is slated to be powered by a 150-hp fuel cell (commence eye-rolling here: the global infrastructure for fuel-cell power isn't in place and won't be for decades, if ever) and be sold in small numbers beginning in 2015. Insiders expect volume to reach 20,000 units by 2017.
There's no telling if the Superlight will actually reach production -- German automakers are famous for big plans that soon fizzle -- but the idea's existence is promising in itself. It comes in the wake of BMW's carbon-bodied Project i program, which focuses intensive tech advancement on a range of super-sports cars and small city cars. Project i was initially met with great skepticism from pundits, but Munich is moving to make its offerings a showroom reality. By contrast, Mercedes's forward-thinking projects have traditionally taken the extra-long view and have rarely been suited for production.
The Superlight is also cool because it's Stuttgart touching on its core competency and market: midsize sedans. The E-class pretty much is the Mercedes brand, at least where ordinary people are concerned; as such, it's a better place to go dreaming and doing low-run stuff than at the fringes of price or size. A carbon-fiber family sedan is more relatable and easier to get everyday people excited about than a carbon compact or supercar. It's also easier to imagine it fitting into our complex, unpredictable world.
The image at the top of this post is an Autobild/Larson rendering of how the E-class Superlight might look; you can see a larger version of the same image here. I strongly suggest you go read Kacher's piece on the car. It's good stuff.
Above: The 2012 Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan.
Post & let us know your thoughts/opinions...
I think it would be good to have a all Carbon-Fiber Corvette or ZL1 Camaro ?
Mercedes-Benz's Carbon-Fiber Sedan
Stuttgart is said to be planning a carbon-fiber four-door built like a supercar.
By Sam Smith Nov 23, 2011 7:38AM
Carbon-fiber is magical stuff. Here we have a simple, easily constructed composite construction material. If assembled properly -- the right proportion of woven carbon filaments and plastic resin -- it is both strong and flexible, light and durable. It's been used in aerospace applications for decades and has served as the backbone of the modern motorsport industry, underpinning everything from Formula 1 cars to the interior trim on your sport sedan. Most important, this is a versatile material. (It's so versatile, in fact, that Lamborghini and Callaway Golf went to great lengths to develop a method of shooting it from a gun during construction. If that doesn't blow your mind, you didn't pay enough attention in science class.) Carbon-fiber is useful anywhere a light, strong composite is needed, but it tends to find a home in speed parts and sports cars -- typically high-dollar investments -- because it's so expensive to produce. Traditional thinking holds that, given enough time, the construction costs will come down and composites like this will make their way into more pedestrian machinery.
And now, if reports are to be believed, Mercedes-Benz is building a carbon-fiber-bodied four-door. More specifically, it's building a carbon E-class sedan, and it's going to sell it to the public.
This is really, really cool. <!--EndofExcerptMarker-->
The details can be found over at Automobile, where Georg Kacher, the magazine's European correspondent, does a deep dive on the subject. Suffice it to say that the car is Stuttgart's answer to the efficiency question currently ******* the industry; that is, a way to greatly increase efficiency by radically decreasing curb weight.
A complete, carbon-fiber-bodied E-class is said to save roughly 700 pounds over the current steel-bodied machine. Chop that much weight out of any car and fuel economy and performance go through the roof. Currently, the E-class Superlight is slated to be powered by a 150-hp fuel cell (commence eye-rolling here: the global infrastructure for fuel-cell power isn't in place and won't be for decades, if ever) and be sold in small numbers beginning in 2015. Insiders expect volume to reach 20,000 units by 2017.
There's no telling if the Superlight will actually reach production -- German automakers are famous for big plans that soon fizzle -- but the idea's existence is promising in itself. It comes in the wake of BMW's carbon-bodied Project i program, which focuses intensive tech advancement on a range of super-sports cars and small city cars. Project i was initially met with great skepticism from pundits, but Munich is moving to make its offerings a showroom reality. By contrast, Mercedes's forward-thinking projects have traditionally taken the extra-long view and have rarely been suited for production.
The Superlight is also cool because it's Stuttgart touching on its core competency and market: midsize sedans. The E-class pretty much is the Mercedes brand, at least where ordinary people are concerned; as such, it's a better place to go dreaming and doing low-run stuff than at the fringes of price or size. A carbon-fiber family sedan is more relatable and easier to get everyday people excited about than a carbon compact or supercar. It's also easier to imagine it fitting into our complex, unpredictable world.
The image at the top of this post is an Autobild/Larson rendering of how the E-class Superlight might look; you can see a larger version of the same image here. I strongly suggest you go read Kacher's piece on the car. It's good stuff.
Above: The 2012 Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan.
#4
11-25-2011, 11:18 AM
Hi `Mike, thanks for your post & infor...I think there will in the future...The price of carbo-fiber is coming down & I think the major auto companies are already working with carbon-fiber to reduce weight for better MPG's & Performance 
Future car technologies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
<CITE>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_car_technologies</CITE>Cached - Similar
Potential future car technologies include varied energy sources and ... Aluminum, carbon fiber and fiberglass are currently being used more in cars today. ..
================================
Luxury Gets Light: BMW Takes Stake In Carbon Fiber Maker SGL
http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1...iber-maker-sgl
^^Click above link
Last edited by Space; 11-25-2011 at 11:21 AM.
