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Showing posts with label Carbon Fiber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carbon Fiber. Show all posts
Friday, July 29, 2011
This is a concept, so the production version will be a bit different, but overall the shape will be pretty much what we see here. They will of course lose the glass side panels and roof, both to be replaced with carbon fiber panels as is the entire outer shell. If you compare it to the renderings in the post below this, you see it is kind of a hybrid of a few of them. There haven't been much details released yet, but some of them of note that I did read are the car will have tall 19" wheels, which are very large diameter for a car of this size. The stated purpose for these are that they lower the rolling resistance and improve efficiency. It will also go 0-60 in under 8 seconds. It will charge on a regular household 110v outlet in six hours. That basically means the battery pack is small as previously reported, probably 16 to 18 kWh. It will also have a range extender option that BMW calls i-REx. The range extender will be a small gasoline(not diesel) engine that will only charge the battery pack, it will not have the ability to drive the wheels directly like the Chevy Volt can under certain circumstances.
I'm sure there will be lot's of info coming out in the next few days, I'll try to get it all up here as soon as it's available.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
BMW Carbon Fibers Factory in Moses Lake, WA is Completed and Ready To Begin Production
0 comments Posted by crue at 12:33 PM
It may not be much to look at in the above picture, but this newly constructed factory in Moses Lake, Washington will play a big role in the BMW i3 and probably many other future BMW vehicles.
BMW, along with the SGL Group built this facility in Moses Lake primarily because they will be able to take advantage of the inexpensive electricity which is mostly all generated by hydro power. Besides the cheap electric rates, this renewable way of generating electricity is in line with BMW's commitment to sustainability, and allows them to make the energy-intensive carbon fiber material without producing nearly as much pollution as they would if they were using electricity from a coal burning power plant.
This facility will employ 80 workers by the end of this year and up to 200 once all six buildings on the campus are completed and operational. With these plans, it's obvious that BMW intends on using CFRP in many more vehicles than only the i3. This is more evidence the i3 may just be the "revolutionary" vehicle that BMW has been touting it as. The combination of the highly efficient electric drivetrain, the newly developed lithium-ion battery cells that are nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistry and the extensive use of advanced materials sounds like the engineers have been busy at work.
Hopefully the designers do as good a job on the vehicles appearance. It's hard to tell what's under all the camouflage in the spy photo's we have seen, but the overall shape doesn't really capture the sleek, streamlined look that the BMW-released rendering appeared to have. However we'll have to wait until we see an actual pre-production i3 without all the camouflage to really critique the design. Rumor has it we'll only have to wait until the Frankfurt Auto Show in September...
Monday, February 21, 2011
BMW, in a joint venture with SGL is building a new plant in Moses Lake, Washington to manufacture the carbon fiber body panels for the new i3 and other BMW models.
When completed, the plant will be 154,250 square-foot and take advantage of the use of hydro-generated electricity the area has to offer. This allows the plant to drastically reduce it's electricity costs (carbon fiber production requires a lot of electricity) while using an environmentally friendly source of generation. This keeps in line with the BMW groups philosophy of being the most sustainable auto manufacturer, an award they have won an amazing six years in a row now.
http://www.columbiabasinherald.com/news/article_9367ffe8-32f3-11e0-b815-001cc4c002e0.html
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