Japanese researchers from industry, academia, and the government are developing stronger, lighter materials for automotive parts such as bodywork, wheels, and windows. The core of research and development is to make full use of polymer materials, that is, plastics as the main component material, the purpose is to use such materials to reduce the weight of cars in half and accelerate the popularity of electric vehicles.
Professor Kozo Ito of the University of Tokyo is leading the project with the support of the Cabinet Office's ImPACT project (launched in 2014). Its research team plans to launch in September a car made of high-performance polymer materials that has never appeared before.
Both natural polymer materials and synthetic polymer materials are composed of tiny molecular chains and are often found in everyday products, including resins made of plastics and films, rubber in tires, and seismic resistance for buildings. Shocker. Today's cars are made of heavy materials such as steel and glass. Such parts are durable and have increased safety, but they have limited fuel efficiency. Plastic is lighter but more fragile. If you can design a material that has the same strength as steel but is lighter, you can greatly increase the car's range.
One area where this material can be used is car windows. Researchers at the Sumitomo Chemical team led by Tatsuya Kasahara are working on plastics to replace metal and glass used in car windows to greatly reduce the weight of cars. The team's goal is to create more robust than glass windshield of transparent plastic.
Tire maker Bridgestone is also making more durable rubber, making tires lighter and making progress. At the same time, Toray Industries, a manufacturer of industrial textiles, is also developing new technologies that mix resins with polyrotaxane materials to increase the strength of plastics, which can increase plastic tension by 8 times and flexural strength by 50 times. If this technology is applied to glass fiber, it can not only be used to produce explosion-proof glass, but also be used in combination with carbon fiber to make a car body frame, reducing the weight of the car and improving its durability.
The prototype is expected to be launched in September. It is expected to be 38% lighter than existing models due to the use of tough polymer materials, including carbon fiber reinforced plastics in the body panels. If the same model is made of iron and glass, it weighs 1333 kg, while using new materials will only produce 832 kg. The biggest obstacle to the application of new polymer materials to ordinary cars is the high cost. The price of new polymer materials is several times that of traditional materials.