BMW’s new mold for the auto industry
30 percent lighter than aluminum
Lightening the plug-in load
Despite massive obstacles against plugging in the future of the auto industry, the electrification of a significant chunk of the automotive future seems inevitable. Yet, the success of the plug might be dependent upon more than just cheaper, smaller and more powerful batteries.
Instead, a significant reduction in vehicle weight might be the key to plug-in cost-effectiveness, and that makes BMW’s Megacity Car Concept – planned for a 2013 launch – an interesting body of work.
Carbon fiber. Head to any major auto show and the hottest concepts are packaged in carbon fiber, thanks to its ability to push the limits of design, but carbon fiber’s potential stretches far beyond sleek, wind-slicing car bodies. For instance, BMW believes that the weight of its next generation electric vehicles, known as the Megacity line of cars, will be reduced by 30 percent thanks to carbon fiber, without sacrificing safety.
Unfortunately, however, carbon fiber is expensive. Consequently, cost has prevented carbon fiber from rewriting automotive history so far; however, by 2013 BMW believes carbon fiber economics should begin to scale into competitiveness, setting a new mold for the auto industry.
Pictured above is the latest carbon-fiber influenced sketch of the design direction of the upcoming Megacity vehicle according to Straightline.
Certainly, many might call the Megacity wildly futuristic, or an even worse science experiment than the Toyota Prius. The future, however, will demand pushing the limits of our automotive box, and the design language of the Megacity is a step towards that future.
Hard to say we’re not a bunch of hypocrites, Larry. We’ll talk the talk, but we don’t want to walk the walk. Even worse, we love inefficiency.
Still, carbon fiber could make vehicles much lighter, without risking safety. Coupled with advances in automotive safety software, the possibility of small, light, yet extremely safe vehicles is at least becoming theoretically possible. Unfortunately, however, it’s not just about safety, but comfort. We’re more comfortable in big vehicles, or at least we think we are.
Ultimately, we want change, but we don’t want to change. That’s not going to be an easy conundrum to overcome.
A major impediment to using lighter cars is the fact that some people will continue to buy tanks and this leads to a situation where even if you want to do the right thing by buying a lighter, more fuel efficient car (regardless of how it is powered), you lose.
So we continue to use twice as much fuel per-capita as most other countries do …essentially moving 2 tons of steel with a 200lb person on board and that 2 tons of iron encourages others to buy the same grossly inefficient vehicle as a kind of self-protection.
In a country that seems to like to characterize it’s technology and other societal efforts as “smart (insert your favorite kind of “smart”).. we are.. emphatically , NOT SMART compared to the rest of the world that seems to “get” the idea of using 1/2 the energy per capita as a way to have less dependency and to be less vulnerable to external supplies of energy.
Notice that in places like Europe and Japan, you don’t have people buying Chevy Tahoes to protect themselves against others who have similar-sized behemoths.
Why we can’t get to a society that thinks similarly is a mystery but for all the yammering about our “dependence on foreign oil” methinks we are a country of hypocrites because everyone is expecting someone to be the good doobie.