We always drew cars thinking one day that carbon fiber would be a viable source of SOME part of a vehicle’s development. In modern times we have been constrained to specialty vehicles, concepts, aftermarket parts, or under the hood as a way to provide a lightweight alternative to metal.
Well, along comes Toray Industries of Japan to make our dreams soon come true. They have developed a carbon fiber manufacturing process to considerably reduce the time for carbon fiber molding of vehicle platforms from 160 minutes to 10 minutes. While this reduction is incredible, it is still not enough to compete with sheet metal parts, which take just minutes to be manufactured and cost much less. Much, much less. Much. Less.
Toray is optimistic that their process, still in development, will lead to even more reduced manufacturing times and comparable cost, which could come as soon as 4-5 years from now.
carbon fiber is so 1990.