BMW Weaves City Car Out of Carbon Fiber Used in Formula One
BMW’s development chief Klaus Draeger. Photographer: Fabrizio Costantini/Bloomberg
This is a sketch of the Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) Megacity Vehicle (MCV) electric automobile. Source: BMW AG via Bloomberg
Crash damage is seen during testing of the carbon-fiber passenger safety cell of a BMW Megacity Vehicle. Source: BMW AG via Bloomberg
Employees test the carbon-fiber passenger safety cell of a BMW Megacity Vehicle electric automobile. Source: BMW AG via Bloomberg
The BMW Megacity Vehicle comes out in 2013
BMW AG via Bloomberg
Employees test the carbon-fiber passenger safety cell of a Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) Megacity Vehicle (MCV) electric automobile.
Employees test the carbon-fiber passenger safety cell of a Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) Megacity Vehicle (MCV) electric automobile. Source: BMW AG via Bloomberg
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG will cocoon passengers of a battery-powered city car in the same lightweight material used to protect Formula One drivers.
Marking the auto industry’s biggest bet on carbon fiber, BMW will use the hardened fabric to construct a passenger-safety cell for the electric vehicle. An amalgamation of carbon fiber and an aluminum frame will offset as much as 350 kilograms (772 pounds) of additional weight from battery and electronic components, according to Klaus Draeger, BMW’s development chief.
“The economics will be balanced on a razor blade,” said Christoph Stuermer, an analyst at IHS Automotive in Frankfurt, said in an interview. “The combination of using lots of carbon fiber and breaking it up into smaller pieces may be the magic trick to reduce costs and could make the frame only twice as expensive as aluminium.”
The world’s largest luxury carmaker is racing to build battery-powered vehicles as governments and consumers push for viable alternatives to fuel-burning cars. General Motors Co. and Nissan Motor Co. will introduce electric vehicles later this year. Investors snapped up shares in Tesla Motors Inc., the California-based electric-car maker, leading to a 41 percent surge on its first day of trading June 29.
Seattle Factory
BMW’s carbon fiber for the vehicle will be spun at a $100 million factory near Seattle that the Munich-based manufacturer is building together with partner SGL Carbon SE. The fibers, composed of 50,000 filaments that are each one-seventh as thick as a human hair, will be made into fabrics and then hardened into components at facilities in Germany.
Munich-based BMW wouldn’t discuss prices for the city car. Tesla’s Roadster sells for as much as 84,000 euros ($105,000) in Europe. Nissan priced is mass-market Leaf electric car at just less than 30,000 euros after incentives. In addition to the carbon fiber, BMW is also developing the electric motor as well as the electronics, Draeger said.
The manufacturer of BMW, Mini, and Rolls-Royce models is turning to carbon fiber, which is 50 percent lighter than steel, to reduce the size and cost of the battery needed to run the car. The mega-city vehicle, which will be available in 2013, will be powered by a 96-cell lithium-ion power pack, compared with the bank of 5,088 laptop batteries that run the company’s Mini E test vehicle. The battery cells are being purchased from a joint venture between Robert Bosch GmbH and Samsung SDI Co.
Daimler, Toyota
“Weight in electric vehicles takes on a totally different dimension, and this weight improvement you can only get through carbon-fiber parts,” Herbert Diess, BMW’s purchasing and logistics chief, said in a May interview.
Carbon fiber has been rarely used in automobile manufacturing because its complex production process limits large-scale benefits, said Mohamed Mubarak, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan in Chennai, India. As weight becomes a bigger factor, “carbon fiber will play a major role in electric vehicles, especially for premium carmakers,” which can more easily pass on the extra costs, he said.
Daimler AG plans to introduce carbon-fiber materials in Mercedes-Benz vehicles by 2013, after signing a development agreement with Japan’s Toray Industries Inc. in April. Toyota Motor Corp. used a carbon-fiber body to reduce the weight of its 1/X concept car by 67 percent compared with the Prius hybrid.
Webber Crash
The BMW model’s passenger cell provides enough space for four adults and is created by gluing several carbon-fiber components together. The cell is then glued and screwed onto an aluminum frame that will house the battery and electric motors, according to crash prototypes displayed at a presentation in Garching near Munich this week.
“It’ll be the first large-scale vehicle with a passenger cell out of carbon,” Draeger said. “BMW will bring a revolutionary vehicle to the streets.”
The safety advantages of carbon-fiber materials were on display at the Formula 1 race in Valencia, Spain, on June 27. Red Bull’s Mark Webber crashed out after he caught the wheel of Heikki Kovalainen’s Lotus at 190 miles (306 kilometers) per hour. Webber’s survival may have been linked to the car’s carbon-fiber safety cell, according to BMW, which exited the racing circuit last year.
BMW’s city car won’t go that fast. Speeds will be limited to about 100 miles per hour to avoid excessive drain on the battery. The seating in the vehicle will be higher than a standard car, because of the battery’s position on the floor.
Profit Margins
The rear-wheel-drive car, which will be marketed under a new sub-brand akin to the company’s M performance line, will also likely have a hatchback, a stubby front-end, and large wheels, according to sketches displayed by BMW’s design chief Adrian von Hooydonk.
The car will probably be a drag on profitability for a company that aims to boost its profit margins on cars to at least 8 percent by 2012, said Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst with Credit Suisse in London.
“If you can make money from a car like this, it would be revolutionary,” said Ellinghorst, who rates BMW “outperform.” “You’re trying to make a car from expensive materials for an urban market, which is typically price-sensitive.”
BMW rose as much as 1 euro, or 2.6 percent, to 39.20 euros and traded at 38.63 euros as of 12:33 p.m. in Frankfurt. The stock has climbed 21 percent this year, valuing the company at 24.7 billion euros.
The energy equivalent of a 40-liter fuel tank would require a battery weighing more than 3 tons, BMW’s Diess said. The automaker’s top-of-the-line 7-Series weighs about 2 tons.
With such weights, “you’d never be able to move the car and would need an even larger battery,” said Diess. “You get caught in vicious weight spiral that’s dominated by the battery.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Reiter in Berlin at creiter2@bloomberg.net
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