The material system laboratory's research on the light weight of the car and the reduction of production cost shows that for every 10% reduction in car quality, fuel consumption can be reduced by 6%. Among the existing materials, CFRP has the best lightweight effect; in addition, the rapid development of automobile design and composite material technology. All these make the application speed of CFRP in the field of automobile manufacturing far exceed people's expectations.
The introduction of a certain model of car led this trend. The meeting was held in Munich in 2008 with the purpose of revolutionizing urban transportation technology. It established a "Project i" think tank whose only task was to "forget everything you did before and rethink everything." In 2009, the think tank formed a new energy-saving concept-"Effective Power Vision", which laid the ideological foundation for the company's subsequent research. It required special design of the car body and drive system to achieve brand-new energy saving. The idea is to integrate existing energy-saving technologies into existing templates. In 2011, the company established "Natural Electric, which allows people to use all-electric energy in their daily driving and travel; in the same year, the first all-electric concept car achieved a technical demonstration. In 2012, both high energy efficiency and better sports cars A high-performance concept car was launched, which uses lightweight materials such as CFRP, aluminum and titanium to achieve breakthrough weight reduction; in the same year, a new electric drive system was launched, achieving zero emissions. A new model of the car was launched, the vehicle quality of only 1 245kg, the cruising range can reach 200 km on a single charge, and the acceleration time per 100 km is 7.3 s, which is unique in flexibility.
Among them, the "LifeDrive" modular body structure design is adopted, which is composed of two parts: a passenger cabin (Life) module and a chassis drive (Drive) module. The passenger cockpit module is also called the life module, which constitutes the passenger space for the driver and passengers. The life module made of CFRP is light in weight, safe, and has a spacious and uniform sense of passenger. Chassis drive module is also called eDrive drive system. Its structure is made of aluminum alloy and integrates power components such as electric motor (maximum power 125 kW, maximum torque 250 N·m), battery and fuel engine.
Through cooperation with SGL Automotive Carbon Fiber Material Company, after more than 10 years of research and development, the company began to produce the carbon fiber it needs. The manufacturing process of the life module in its new car: woven carbon fiber into a fabric and soaked in a special resin to make a prepreg; heat-set the prepreg into rigid body parts; adopt a specially developed technology to fully automate body parts Ground bonding into a complete body part. The resulting CFRP body has extremely high compressive strength, can withstand faster acceleration, and the agility and road feel of the vehicle are very good.