A lightweight carbon composite body structure may completely change the way electric vehicles are manufactured in the next ten years. According to foreign media reports, Israeli defense and body panel company Plasan designed this lightweight body structure, which is said to be 45% lighter than steel bodies and 20% lighter than aluminum bodies.
Currently, Plasan has demonstrated this new technology to global OEMs and motorsport companies, including some British companies, and will bring this technology to the market recently. The company’s chief designer Nir Kahn said: “We hope that within two to three years, components using our technology will appear, and a few years later, a complete car body made using this technology will appear.”
The core of Plasan technology is a pultruded (extruded) carbon fiber beam. Carbon fiber filaments are distributed on the tube wall of the beam to make a strong, hard and light structural component.
Each beam is glued to a body panel made of composite materials, forming the semi-structured body side, floor and skylight. Then, use metal "nodes" to connect such sub-components. Among them, the node is made of two pieces of pressed aluminum, which can speed up assembly.
Plasan believes that the design is a breakthrough design, because it can be made using existing production line equipment and traditional basic steel integrated body technology.
Ronen Berger, head of Plasan's composite materials department, said: "Our technology can be applied to mass-produced vehicles, not only for defense or racing applications, and the annual output can reach hundreds of thousands."
Although carbon fiber body technology is relatively expensive, Plasan believes that electric cars using this technology can save $10 per kilogram. Kahn said: "This is more cost-effective than other methods to improve the efficiency or battery life of electric vehicles."