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Researchers halfway to cutting carbon fiber costs by 90%

Carbon fiber has been utilized for decades to build racecars, as a means to cut weight while maintaining strength. But until recently, the space-age material has been largely absent from the street on anything but supercars because of the expense to use it. Recently, BMW signaled a major shift in that trend when it starting using carbon fiber reinforced plastic panels on the i3 and i8. This relatively small scale start might be just the beginning; the German company believes that a breakthrough to inexpensively manufacture the lightweight stuff is just on the horizon.
MAI Carbon Cluster Management GmbH counts BMW, Audi, Airbus, the German government and many other organizations as supporters, and it's researching how to make carbon fiber cheaper to produce, according to Automotive News Europe. The company thinks it can reduce costs by 90 percent in the near future. "We've certainly reached a halfway point on our cost-cutting target for suitable carbon-fiber parts," said project head Klaus Drechsler to Automotive News Europe.
Unfortunately, it isn't entirely clear just what MAI Carbon is doing to make such a huge leap possible. However, a recent post on the company's website talks about a new form a carbon fiber using a thermoplastic matrix that could be cured in less than three minutes. That's compared to about 90 minutes in the traditional process with an autoclave.

BMW to change model designations, further yet from actual displacement?

Once upon a time, you could look at the back of a trunk lid of a BMW and come up with a pretty fair idea of what sat under its hood. For example, a 320i was a 3 Series with a fuel-injected, 2.0-liter engine, a 328i was a 3 Series with a fuel-injected, 2.8-liter engine and a 328Ci was a two-door 3 Series with the same engine. Those were good days.
Today, though, that simplicity is dead and gone. A 328i now has a 2.0-liter engine, just like the 320i, while the simple "C" designation that was affixed to two-door models has been replaced with a "4," so we have a 428i and a 435i. It gets worse, though. A 550i uses a 4.4-liter, twin-turbocharged V8 (it should be a 544ti, although we'd be willing to hear an argument for "tti") and a 740i uses a 3.0-liter, turbocharged six-cylinder, which is the same engine found in a 535i. It's madness.
And, well, it's about to get madder, if a post on a BMW enthusiast forum is to be believed. According to f30post.com, we could see a shakeup in at least the 3 and 4 Series nomenclature, thanks to an impending refresh that will see the addition of new, turbocharged four- and six-cylinder engines, codenamed B48 and B58, respectively.

Behind the Scenes of BMW's 'Drift Mob,' Part 2 [w/video]

After spending four days practicing about a dozen drift stunt moves in a parking lot for an upcoming BMW "Drift Mob" internet mini-film, Rhys Millen, Sam Hübinette, Dai Yoshihara, Rich Rutherford, and Conrad Grunewald are finally ready for show time. We are brought to the huge urban traffic circle to see the stunts performed midway through the day to observe for a couple of hours.
The undertaking is massive, with multiple cameras set up, scores of crew members, a helicopter filming from above, a rigged pickup for car-to-car shots, sidewalks lined with security and plenty of curious onlookers, and oh, yeah, a major intersection of a top world city shut down for an entire weekend.
The five drifting legends are nestled in their identical red BMW M235i coupes, which have been modified with special handbrakes but essentially nothing else you can't get on a stock version, and are listening to direction from director Mic Rodgers and stunt coordinator Riley Harper. We're basically given free rein of the set, to shoot the cars, the drivers, and at one point, even hopping in with Yoshihara for one of the admittedly more tame stunts. Even then, the g-forces are so severe that they flip our cameraphone's video recording from landscape mode to portrait. Yes, this is a pretty cool day to be reporting on cars, and as we said during our first installment of our behind the scenes coverage of Drift Mob, we're honored to be the only US media outlet here to tell the tale.