April focus: New materials & CMF

As you will know by now, Car Design News has dedicated each month towards a specific topic. Previous themes have included design for manufacturing, autonomous driving and digital tools – which we covered last month. For April, we turn our attention towards new materials.

In years gone by, this theme felt more exploratory and future-looking. Solutions were often presented following small-scale tests with limited viability for production-readiness. Interesting, but the ultimate goal is to see real change at the end product level: the car that rolls off the line.

Now, it feels like the industry is on the cusp of real breakthroughs. Just last month we became aware of various happenings in the material space – from alternatives to carbon fibre and leather derived from fruit waste, to the versatility of man-made cloth and even smart glass. There is plenty going on, and plenty to dig into.

With Milan Design Week coming up, there will no doubt be more weird and wonderful innovations presented not only from the world of automotive, but fashion, product design and – naturally – furniture. Here, the world of new materials runs quickly. Faster than automotive in nearly every instance. And so it should, with strict safety and durability considerations around the vehicle, not to mention a sustainable (long-term and reliable) source of whatever raw materials are required.

Could experimental products using apple waste, bacterial melanin or wool combined with bio-resin find real applications in automotive? What about algae and sea shells, or so-called ‘beer leather’ that uses waste material from the brewing process. Perhaps ‘spray on’ materials, already in use within sports footwear, could be employed within certain areas of the vehicle in future. Of course, we suspect many of our esteemed guest speakers will have stories and case studies of their own to share during Car Design Dialogues Milan.

Oftentimes, it is not about a discovering an exotic material from a far-flung corner of the world, but a new approach to using old ones. We’ve seen old car tyres repurposed and pressed into floors or leather offcuts turned into decorative veneers, for example. Clearly, recycling is not a new idea, but we always appreciate it when new opportunities to re-use emerge. Monomaterials should help with that. Tearing down a vehicle that has reached the end of its usable life can be done quickly and easily, but with plenty of waste. By using large structures that consist of one primary material, the process of sorting is simplified and said materials can be more easily reused.

On the conventional motor show circuit, concepts seem to be placing a greater focus on which materials are used and where. Much can be done with a show car, of course, and recent examples of material innovation include Skoda’s Vision O concept. This sleek estate car served as a platform to experiment with recycled 3D-printed plastic, used as the base for much of the visible coverings and its intricate meshed headrests.

While the primary focus will be on materials, we will also keep an eye out for broader CMF trends. We have already investigated the world of paint with suppliers like PPG, Akzonobel and BASF, but there will no doubt be more to come. 

We look forward to bringing you stories that will not only inform but inspire during the course of the month. But in reality, this is a topic that will remain in acute focus for quite some time.