When engineers are looking for a lightweight, yet strong material for automotive components, carbon fiber is often the go-to choice. This textile has been around for decades in race cars and high-end automobiles. Performance vehicle producers have found ways to make the stuff even better over the years.
McLaren started using carbon fiber 40 years ago on its Formula One cars. Since then, it has innovated the material to be even better. The company makes extensive use of the lightweight substance, including using it for all the monocoques of the brand’s road vehicles.
McLaren is now showing off a new innovation in carbon fiber. The company calls it the Automated Rapid Tape production method, or just ART for short. The automaker touts this innovation as being able to create lighter, stiffer, and stronger components. There’s also less waste left over because up to 95 percent of the raw dry tape material goes into the final part.
Look Out For ART On The McLaren W1
The first vehicle to benefit from McLaren’s ART carbon fiber is the upcoming W1 hypercar. A portion of the vehicle’s active front wing assembly uses these components, and the section is 10 percent stiffer than a comparable pre-impregnated part. By later in 2025, the automaker plans to expand its manufacturing capacity of this carbon fiber. In the future, the company expects it could create an entire monocoque chassis out of this material, resulting in a lighter vehicle.
There’s always something newer and better on the horizon, but the challenge is making these materials affordable as a consumer product.
ART carbon fiber uses a robotic arm to deposit measured lengths of dry composite tape in precise layers. The automaker’s system uses a specially designed machine with a surface that can move and rotate. Another advantage is that the technology allows for greater consistency from part to part. McLaren figured out a “high-rate” production method that was better for its vehicles. Previously, ART carbon fiber was for crafting large aircraft components such as the fuselage and wings.
More Advantages Of ART
The ART method allows McLaren to tailor the material placement depending on the area’s load bearing or stiffness requirements. For example, corners, joints, and edges can have more carbon for extra strength. Often carbon fiber is uniform across an entire part, but this application allows pieces to be thicker or thinner as needed. This type of application is called anisotropic stiffness, which refers to enhancing rigidity in specific directions while maintaining flexibility elsewhere. The automated process also reduces the chances of human error, minimizing the amount of rejected parts and creating pieces within specific design tolerances.
ART carbon fiber also has advantages in manufacturing costs. McLaren expects this production method to allow for the greater use of the lightweight material in its vehicles.
TopSpeed’s Take
There’s always something newer and better on the horizon, but the challenge is making these materials affordable as a consumer product. This process generally starts at the high end and then trickles down to more affordable vehicles. There was a point when carbon fiber was exclusively for top-level race cars. Then, it started showing up in supercars. Today, the stuff isn’t too rare in sub-$100K sports cars.
Expect this material to evolve in the same way. It’ll be exclusively for McLaren’s most expensive vehicles initially but may eventually be available in more attainable models. We can’t wait to see what else the company can do with this lightweight innovation.
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