BMW has confirmed that they have made a joint venture with SGL of America for a three times higher production of carbon fibre

The demand of using carbon fibre in the automobile manufacturing is increasing day by day and to fulfil its production needs BMW has confirmed a joint venture with SGL to increase their carbon fibre production. On other hand SGL has proclaimed that it’ll be tripling the capacity at its Moses Lake production facility to handle the enlarged carbon fibre demand.   This joint venture is not a new thing between BMW and SGL as they are already doing production at Moses Lake for BMW i-Series. Only the i3 production line up uses almost 3000 tonnes of carbon fibre every year however a third and fourth production line is currently being built to double the production capacity from 3000 to 6000 tonnes every year. Some further site expansion has been announced by the venture partners with an investment of $200million to timely complete the targets for 2015. After the completion of this plant, it will capture the position of being world’s largest carbon fibre production facility.     All currently produced carbon fibre is used for the production of BMW i3 and is not enough to start parallel production for other carbon fibre based models. Both partners said that CFRP (carbon fibre reinforced plastics) applications are likely to grow in the concept cars and eco-friendly mobility in future. The carbon fibre composts production is based on several processes and requires a precursor based on polyacryl-nitrile fibre which is an exclusive co-production of SGL and Mitsubishi Rayon. This raw material will be used for final carbon fibre production at Moses Lake facility. All this planning shows that your next BMW will be based on some extra carbon fibre and will be lightweight.