Daimler and Toray to Establish
Joint Venture for Manufacturing and Marketing of carbon-fiber
based automobile parts
Stuttgart/Tokyo - Toray
Industries, Inc. (headquarters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President:
Akihiro Nikkaku; hereinafter referred to as “Toray”) and German
automobile manufacturer Daimler AG (headquarters: Stuttgart,
Germany), announced that the companies agreed to establish the
joint venture (headquarters: Esslingen, Germany), for
manufacturing and marketing of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics
(CFRP) automobile parts. The companies signed a joint venture
contract today.
Under the Joint Development
Agreement signed in March last year, Toray, in addition to
developing optimal carbon fiber intermediate materials for CFRP,
has been working on the design and molding processes, with
Daimler taking responsibility for designing parts and developing
technologies for joining of the parts.
By bringing together their
respective strengths, the companies have succeeded in developing
an innovative technology for mass-production of CFRP parts with
a significantly shorter molding cycle. The partners plan to
start supplying the mass-produced CFRP parts utilizing Short
Cycle Resin Transfer Molding (RTM), an innovative CFRP molding
process technology developed by Toray for Daimler’s
Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicles to be launched in 2012.
As the world's largest
manufacturer of carbon fibers, Toray has identified expansion of
its Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composite Business in the automotive
field as one of its top priorities. In June 2008, the company
established the Automotive Center (AMC), a comprehensive
development base for automotive applications, and the Advanced
Composite Center (ACC), a center for developing technology and
applications for CFRP products, in April 2009. These centers
serve as the core entities of the A&A (Automotive & Aircraft)
Center in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, its comprehensive technology
development center for automotive and aircraft applications, and
are involved in the development of optimal materials and
processes for automotive applications.
Lightweight construction is an
integral part of Daimler’s strategy towards sustainable
mobility. The company has set a development goal of reducing the
body-in-white weight by up to 10% compared with the preceding
model for all Mercedes-Benz vehicles with the aim of further
improving fuel efficiency and reducing exhaust gas emissions. In
order to achieve this goal, Daimler has been forcing
developments of technologies based on the principle of
allocating the right material in the right place. As part of
this move, the company plans to actively adopt CFRP parts and
increase the number of models using such parts.
Reducing the vehicle weight for
boosting fuel efficiency is an important issue in the automobile
industry. The move towards adoption of carbon fiber is expected
to soon gain momentum as a solution for significantly reducing
the automobile body weight. This weight-saving initiative by
Toray and Daimler would partially offset any increase in weight
caused by additional safety and comfort features or new
technologies used in alternative drive systems. Furthermore CFRP
parts contribute to an increased stiffness of the vehicle body,
thereby further increasing the crash integrity of the passenger
cell as well as the comfort.
The two companies intend to
continue promoting their joint development to establish an
overwhelmingly cost competitive mass production technology. The
joint venture will manufacture and market CFRP parts to further
promote the adoption of carbon fiber composite materials in the
automotive field even beyond the current applications in e.g.
sport cars.
