Wheels Weekly

Toray Industries, a major Japanese textile manufacturer that also specializes in manufacturing Carbon Fiber had announced a breakthrough in carbon fiber processing methods that may finally shed light on cutting manufacturing times and ultimately cost in this exclusive, high cost material that's crucial in future automotive production, as the industry moves forward in creating vehicles that's lighter in weight, more efficient in fuel consumption and safer as well.

The breakthrough came with improved resin infiltration and hardening technologies, allowing the time needed for molding of carbon monocoque platforms which are 50% lighter than steel, yet 1.5 times safer in a collision; from 160 minutes to 10 minutes. This would drastically tightened the gap between cost of manufacturing carbon fiber and metal, thou even with improvements made, the cost per kilogram for carbon fiber vs steel still remains at a staggering ratio of 50:1, and the molding time for each platform using carbon fiber still takes almost twice the the time needed for metal, nonetheless this is still an important breakthrough.