BMW to Source Carbon Fiber for Megacity EV from New U.S. Plant
By John O'Dell April 6, 2010
When BMW launches its new family of Megacity electric vehicles, lightweight body materials will be one of their range-enhancing advances and some of the material - carbon-fiber reinforced plastic - will come from the U.S. rather than Germany.
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Megacity concept shows design direction BMW plans to take with new line of electric-drive vehicles.
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The automaker and its longtime composites development partner, Germany's SGL Group, said today they have formed a joint venture to build a new carbon fiber materials plant in Moses Lake, Washington - a small (18,000 population) city in the central part of the state.
The plan calls for an initial investment of $100 million for a plant that will employ about 80 people. BMW will be the sole client.
BMW said that abundant and inexpensive hydroelectric power was the chief reason for locating the factory in Washington state.
Automakers figure they can improve fuel economy by as much as 2 percent for each 100 pounds of weight they can shave from a vehicle.
Carbon-fiber reinforced plastics, commonly called carbon fiber, are light but very strong, enabling automakers to use the material instead of steel for body panels and some frame and suspension members.
The Moses Lake plant won't manufacture the finished components, but rather will be one link in a chain that begins in Japan and ends in Germany.
The raw acrylic polymer material used in manufacturing carbon fiber (it's called polyacrylonitrile, for those of you who've just gotta know), will be produced by a joint venture between SGL Group and Mitsubishi Rayon in Otake, Japan.
The Moses Lake facility will convert the polyacrylic fibers into the actual carbon fibers, which will be shipped to an SGL plant in Wackersdorf, Germany, for processing into carbon fiber fabrics.
The fabric (think fiber glass cloth) then will be used at the BMW plant in Landshut, Germany, to produce components, and the components will be shipped to BMW's Leipzig assembly plant where the 1-Series and X-1 models now are built.
Neither company provided a breakdown of the carbon footprint resulting from all that manufacturing and shipping, but we expect that it will be offset by the CO2 savings from the Megacity EVs if they are a success and sell in substantial volumes.
BMW hasn't provided much in the way of detail about the cars, which were announced more than two years ago. The first model is expected to be launched by 2015 - and perhaps as soon as the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Megacity will be a BMW sub-brand, much like Mini.
The cars will be small, designed for urban use, and will use lithium batteries produced by SB LiMotive, a joint venture of Samsung and Germany's Bosch.
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