BMW took the lead, hard and soft, the era of automotive carbon fiber has come?

"Lamborghini said no?"

In the previous article we mentioned the two eternal themes of the auto industry, new energy and light weight. We have discussed a lot of new energy sources. In this article, we talked about the lightweight of cars.

Why should we reduce weight?

Lightweight, that is, to ensure the safety of the car, reduce the weight of the car as much as possible. Why do cars need to lose weight? See below:

Car weight loss, along with the reduction of fuel consumption and emissions, acceleration and maneuverability, due to shortened braking distance, also to some extent increased the safety. The truth is very simple. If people are too fat, they need to lose weight to be more flexible and healthy.

Lightweight material

Common lightweight materials are divided into metals and non-metals. Metal materials mainly include high-strength steels, aluminum alloys, magnesium alloys, and titanium alloys; non-metal materials include engineering plastics and composite materials, among which are our soon-to-be-released carbon fibers.

Compare several common lightweight materials as follows:

Note: The higher the specific strength, the lighter the material used to achieve the same strength; the higher the specific modulus, the greater the rigidity of the material.

It can be seen that, in addition to the high price, carbon fiber has a dual quality of both carbon materials and fibers and is lighter in weight than steel, magnesium, titanium, and aluminum, but its strength and modulus are higher. ".

carbon fiber

So what is carbon fiber? First comes a picture. The following picture shows the carbon fiber used in the McLaren MSO 12C concept car.

Carbon fiber is a kind of fiber material with carbon content above 95%. It is made up of flake graphite, carbonized and graphitized.

In addition to the advantages mentioned above, carbon fiber also has a good modality (enhanced NVH performance of the vehicle), a high degree of freedom in design, a large integration capability (a large number of parts and assembly processes are reduced), and a very good energy absorption rate (increased Vehicle collision energy absorption capability, high vibration damping (increasing vehicle fatigue strength) and so on.

But at the same time, carbon fiber also has its drawbacks, and it is not small, just a word, expensive. Its "black gold" title came from this.

BMW heads up, does Lamborghini say no?

At present, the body of the aluminum alloy in the market should occupy the mainstream, and many models such as the Audi A8, Jaguar XFL, and Tesla have all adopted aluminum bodies.

The realization of large-scale use of carbon fiber, has become a commercial vehicle BMW, as shown below, BMW 7 Series 730Li car weight is only 1830kg, even more than the aluminum body Audi A8L 30FSI even lighter 90kg.

It is worth pointing out that the application of carbon fiber is a selling point used by BMW to advertise. The following figure is highlighted in the Carbon Core (carbon fiber core) marked on the B-pillar of the BMW Seven Series.

In fact, BMW is not the first time it has done so. Before the i3 electric and i8 hybrid models, carbon fiber has become the main material of its body structure.

Under the leadership of BMW, the application and research and development of carbon fiber by major OEMs are also in full swing. However, among many car companies, one is not.

According to foreign media reports, last Monday (December 4th), Lamborghini, known for its use of carbon fiber, launched an SUV named "URUS", which weighs less than 5,000 pounds but uses steel and steel. Aluminium two kinds of materials, this sudden turning around, is maverick or otherwise hidden? Thoughtful.