COMPOSITESWORLD.COM is the #1 website for composites materials and services. COMPOSITESWORLD.COM receives over 40,000 unique visitors a month and is projecting over 3 million page views in 2006. High Performance Composites, Composites Technology and
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he composites industry is full of innovators and creative thinkers, people who move the industry forward incre- mentally toward greater efciencies, lower costs and higher quality. But the big material and process leaps the composites community has seen throughout its history have required more than individual expertise. In the aerospace market, for example, Te Boeing Co.'s 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350 are products of a massive, collective corporate commitment, backed by a capital investment as big, bold and precedent-setting as the envisioned product — a commitment that, to some composites pessimists, appears reckless, hasty, ill-timed and doomed. Corporate trailblazers are rare, and rarely attempt such leaps without a good command of the materials, processes and technolo- gies required to achieve success. Even so, the risk of failure is real, and redoubles with the size of the enterprise. Missed deadlines and technical setbacks are all the more embarrassing to risk takers for being so public — and inevitably exploited by naysayers. But at the end of what is, at best, a colossal controlled experiment is the honor and recognition as the frst to reach a bold and audacious goal. Onto this less-traveled corporate road, Munich, Germany-based BMW Group steered when, in 2009, it elected to manufacture an all-electric, four-door passenger car using carbon fber composites. Originally denoted the MegaCity Vehicle, the commuter car now known as the i3 is designed primarily for urban driving and can travel about 100 miles/160 km on a single charge. Te i3 features two primary structures, the aluminum Drive Module — which in- corporates the powertrain, chassis, battery, and structural and crash functions — and the Life Module (passenger cell), made from car- bon fber composites. Te latter is capped by a composite roof made with recycled carbon fber, and features a spare but comfortable BMW's i3 , the frst series-production car with a CFRP passenger cell, what BMW calls the Life Module, entered the European market in late 2013, and came to North America in spring 2014. Designed for city driving, the plug-in electric can travel up to 100 miles/ 160 km on a charge. It also features a composite roof, reinforced with recycled carbon fber, as well as convenient — and very stylish — rear-hinged "coach doors" (above). A glimpse into the inner workings of an automaker at the forefront of serial-production autocomposites. BMW Leipzig The epicenter of i3 production T Source (both photos) | BMW AG 2 4 INSIDE MANUFACTURING C O M P O S I T E S W O R L D . C O M 0614CT IM-OK.indd 24 5/20/2014 8:30:56 AM