Recently, various media reported the world famous Carbon fiber supplier MAI Carbon company will be in Germany in 2020 to become the world's Carbon fiber materials research and development centers, by the Carbon fiber material instead of automotive metal parts of the message

Carbon fiber material can effectively reduce the fuel consumption, reduce pollution and improve braking performance. Will carbon-fibre components eventually replace car parts?

1. Replace metal parts?

Recently, various media reported the world famous Carbon fiber supplier MAI Carbon company will be in Germany in 2020 to become the world's Carbon fiber materials research and development centers, by the Carbon fiber material instead of automotive metal parts of the message.

Carbon fiber material can effectively reduce the fuel consumption, reduce pollution and improve braking performance. Will carbon-fibre components eventually replace car parts?

2. Opinions vary

"Carbon fiber is used more in aircraft manufacturing," said lu dong, director of the China and German intelligent manufacturing alliance component committee, in an interview. Carbon fiber can be lightweight, but not much, and the main consideration is that it is not cost-effective. Carbon fiber is expensive to use on cars, and a single carbon fiber girder costs more than 30,000 yuan. Even premium brands such as BMW and Mercedes rarely use carbon fiber. The market share in the domestic premium car market is not high, and the unit price is less than 150 thousand yuan. Therefore, the future of carbon fiber on domestic automobile is very limited.

The outlook is unclear: many car companies are experimenting with our carbon-fiber girders, drive shafts, bumpers and doors. Carbon fiber products are not rusty, light weight, low energy consumption, fatigue resistance and good safety. The biggest problem for the automotive industry is the high price of carbon fiber, which can't be used in the middle and low-end cars. Only high-end cars use a small amount of carbon fiber products. Li huai-jing, a sales manager at China's largest domestic carbon fiber co., LTD., said it is hard to say whether the industry can promote the use of carbon fiber.

The automobile can not be separated from: the university of donghua university material science and engineering researcher, doctoral tutor pan ding hold different views. "There is no carbon fiber," he says. "the car industry is not going to grow." Carbon fiber is more common in aircraft manufacturing, pan said. Although the price is a bit higher, carbon fiber girder and carbon fiber bumper are also used in cars. BMW is the best manufacturer of carbon fiber. The automobile USES carbon fiber weight light, save oil, sewage less, the market prospect is wide.

3. Core issues

High cost: it is understood that the high cost is the carbon fiber composite material batch used in the car, the important factors which is mainly manifested in two aspects: one is the production cost is high, but the high cost of raw material prices. Currently, the price of carbon fiber per kilogram in the market is more than 120 yuan, more than 10 times the price of fiberglass.

Hard to recycle: carbon fiber is not as easy to melt and reshaped as aluminum. Carbon fiber is formed by long and accurate carbon fiber arrangement, and then formed by polymer bonding under high temperature and pressure. Once formed, most of the hard polymers will not be able to obtain valuable fibres by melting, burning, or chemically dissolving.

Performance degradation: recycled carbon fiber is still a good material, but it doesn't perform better than aluminum and low-cost compound materials in practice.

4

The solution

Expert view one: in the development of carbon fiber, we mainly focus on technology development, and provide technical support for parts companies such as board spring, cover, shell, and bumper. Develop carbon fiber, the process is no problem, already have successful case. The prospect of carbon fiber promotion is generally good and requires user support. Small batch, high cost; Increased automation and increased production will solve the cost problem, while raw material costs are not a big problem.

Expert opinion two: with the increase of the amount of carbon fiber composite material in the car, the automobile manufacturing four process stamping, welding, coating and general assembly will change. For example, stamping will be replaced by moulding and forging processes; The assembly will no longer require so much welding; Some cars are basically no longer needed. "The whole car will become a dozen modules, and the assembly rhythm will be very fast," said Chen. That way, the cost of the assembly line will drop." Therefore, the large-scale application of carbon fiber composite materials will lower the entry threshold of automobile manufacturing industry.

Expert opinion three: in the international, some enterprises make carbon fiber recycling through burning polymer, some enterprises use chemical treatment method to recycle carbon fiber. Either way, recycled carbon fibers are much less capable of bearing weight than new carbon fiber. As a result, recycled carbon fiber is often used to produce lightweight such as tennis rackets and golf rods, with relatively low intensity requirements.