The Society of Plastics Engineers’s Automotive TPO Engineered Polylefins Global Conference was held March 21-24 in Shanghai. The speakers of this conference discussed trends that are affecting how plastics are used in cars.
On this occasion, Rose Ryntz - vice president of advanced engineering and material development at International Automotive Components Group - said: "Most Chinese vehicles weigh more than any other vehicle on a size basis.” It is suggested that China’s auto industry needs to improve efforts to make cars lighter using more plastic components. The weight directly affect the fuel consumption of a vehicle – about 75%, she said, that average weight of cars in China need to be cut by more than 160kg (350 pounds).
At this conference, Ryntz’s talk was focused on lightweighting, an area where China needs to improve. She said much of the weight of cars comes from electronics and safety components and hybrid powertrains typically add 9% to vehicle weight. Currently plastics make up only 10 percent of car weight in China, but the goal is to reach 18-20 percent by 2025. She explained: "The way we're going to increase it is by increasing the volume of plastics and the only way you can do that is by replacing metal."
Another speaker from Inteva Products LLC, Ken Gassman highlighted thermoplastic polyolefins as an idea plastic to use for lightweighting, citing 20 to 25 percent weight savings with TPO. He said:"There's no surprise that TPO has taken hold in the industry," because it is stable and recyclable.
Meanwhile, Ryntz spoke of the interest in using natural fibers as a plastics filler to boost lightweighting efforts. "As a whole that people are looking at what they [can] do with cotton, with coconut fibers, with tomato peels. There are rice hull natural fillers. Any natural resource that can be made into a filler that is acceptable.”
She also mentioned the importance of localizing, so that regional natural materials are used in different production locations. "If you can get that transportation cost out of it, that certainly is a [viable] application. China could develop a lot of those natural resources and get natural filled products inexpensively."
"North America makes all its profits on SUVs and light trucks," she said. But in China, cars are smaller. "They retain their profitability because of a knowledge base when they develop technology [that] they take across programs, and because of that they don't make profits on large vehicles. Small vehicles they know how to implement technology across that small vehicle line. 2016 is the first year that China is going to surpass North America in vehicle production.
"It's endless. It's absolutely endless," she said, referring to the limits to how much plastic could be used in cars. "But it is going to be predicated on the price of oil. If I can get 50 percent of the plastic out [by using natural fillers], then I'm not as dependent on oil costs [to determine how much lightweighting I can do]. Plastics inherently has more design freedom.”
"I think China can do that because a lot of the companies here are joint ventures between the Chinese and the U.S. so I think that it's the case of North America or U.S. bringing the technology or some of the technology, but I think China can leapfrog that because of the skilled labor force. So you can take that as a basis and continue to improve it," she said.
(According to Plastics News China)