Ultralight-hybrid Vehicle Design: Overcoming the Barriers to Using Advanced Composites in the Automotive Industry

Many diverse and important barriers, both real and perceived, inhibit automakers’ adoption of advanced composite materials. A strategy to produce an all-advanced-composite body-in-white (BIW) commercially could be the best method to overcome these barriers. This paper summarizes the ultralight, hybrid-electric “hypercar” concept, emphasizing why massoptimization is crucial to its design; summarizes potentially applicable high-volume advanced composites technologies; recounts two recent studies of the main barriers to structural composites use in the BIW; explains why a whole-system application—not the conventionally prescribed component-based incrementalism—is probably the best way to conquer these barriers and create new opportunities; and explores in greater detail a key barrier of advanced composites, their manufacturing cost, to show how a whole-system application can circumvent it.