Ford is planning to bring lightweight carbon parts to cars like the Focus, even though currently such parts would be prohibitively expensive.
Ford is showing off this, a current Focus fitted with an experimental carbon-fibre bonnet, which weighs about half as much as a conventional steel panel. Generally, carbon is about five times stronger than steel for an equivalent weight of about a third as much. Pretty impressive, pretty expensive.
But that could be all changing. Companies like McLaren and BMW are currently at the cutting edge of carbon research and are finding ways of making carbon components, and even entire carbon vehicles, for a much more affordable price. Indeed, if the labour-intensive nature of current carbon-fibre design and build systems can be reduced, then the actual raw material cost is lower than that of, say, aluminium.
“Reducing a vehicle’s weight can deliver major benefits for fuel consumption but a process for fast and affordable production of carbon fiber automotive parts in large numbers has never been available”, said Inga Wehmeyer, advanced materials and processes research engineer in Ford’s European Research Centre.
“By partnering with materials experts through the Hightech.NRW research project, Ford is working to develop a solution that supports cost efficient manufacturing of carbon fiber components.”
Anthony Sheriff, MD of McLaren Automotive, the road-car making arm of the legendary F1 team, has no doubts that carbon is the future even for mainstream cars:
"Basically everything that’s important to the driving experience, strength for crash safety, weight for speed and efficiency, rigidity for handling, are improved significantly with carbon fibre. That’s the case whether you’re talking about a mid-engined 200mph sports car or a city car.
"I think we already see a number of cars at lower price points that have have woken up to the point that with innovation you can drive the production costs lower. And you are going to see other sports cars, and very interestingly, hybrid and electric city cars using carbon fibre. Especially on electric cars, the weight saving has an enormous benefit because if you have a light electric car, you can have a smaller battery and therefore you save additional weight and additional cost.
"Before you find it in a Ford Focus? Well, it’s not 50 years but neither is it 5 years. I’d say its 10 year before we start to see significant use of carbon fibre in such cars."
That tallies with Ford's plans, which seek to reduce the weight of an average family car by as much as 340kg by the end of the decade.
