Tuesday 6 September 2011

BMW CARBON FIBRE FACTORY FINDS FEET


BMW is steaming ahead with its plan of world domination using the carbon fibre material. Last year BMW, along with Germany’s SGL Group, formed SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers with the sole aim of producing mass-manufactured carbon fibre materials for use in BMW’s upcoming electric cars, the i3 and i8. Later other models will be added of course.


An investment of US$100 million (R714 million) will be made at a plant in Moses Lake, Washington, USA. As a result about 80 local jobs will be created until 2013. Sustainability is quite important to the project as well, and as such BMW says all its production electricity needs for the plant will be sourced from clean and renewable local hydropower. The plant will initially run two carbon fibre lines, each with an annual capacity of 1 500 metric tons.

While BMW hasn’t said anything about it, there surely is scope for other manufacturers to buy their carbon fibre from this factory as well?

2 comments:

Corlette Singh said...

So futuristic. Is the i8 the one in MI4?

Thami Masemola said...

@Corlette: Yes, it is.