Monday, September 24, 2018

Panel: Partnerships key to more composites in cars


By Audrey LaForest

Audrey LaForest 2018 SPE ACCE Chair Alper Kiziltas, left, with panelists Paul Platte, Jud Gibson and Jeffrey Helms.

Novi, Mich. — Along the winding road of current and future automotive trends, there is an opportunity. And that opportunity, mixed into mega trends like electrification, lightweighting and connectivity, is for composites to become more broadly accepted in interior and exterior applications for next-generation vehicles.

But for that to happen, it's going to take partnerships and collaboration, according to panelists at the Society of Plastics Engineers' Automotive Composites Conference and Exhibition.

"There are about 30,000 parts in a vehicle today, and of the 30,000 about 10,000 are plastic," said Jud Gibson, vice president of commercial Americas at DSM Engineering Plastics Inc., during the Sept. 5 panel discussion. "The one thing that we're seeing with composites and the push for lightweighting is that we're nowhere near entitlement if you think about our industry, and we have a long way to go."

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