The car, named Smarter, was built by mechanical engineering students at Chalmers University of Technology, Borås, Sweden, using Oxeon’s TeXtreme®’s spread carbon tow fabric. It weighed 80 kg – said to be about 45% lighter than its competitors – lowering fuel consumption.
According to Henrik Olofsson, CEO of Oxeon, with worldwide availability of finer carbon tows (1-6K) being consumed by the aerospace industry, Oxeon’s patented spread tow and tape weaving technologies allow production of lightweight reinforcements using the more readily available heavier carbon tows.
The Shell Eco-marathon competition challenges students around the world to design, build and test vehicles that travel further using less energy. The Smarter car participated in the Urban Concept category of the Shell competition in May.
Oxeon’s TeXtreme fabrics and TeXero® unidirectional (UD) tapes are used by manufacturers of composites products for the aerospace, automotive, racing, industrial and sports equipment industries. Oxeon is based in Borås, Sweden.
