BMW to Bring Carbon-Fiber Chassis Technology

Recently, BMW has confirmed that it is working on a high-tech carbon-fiber chassis technology. The initiative was introduced last year in August and news is that this technology is on its way as the company is investigating the use of carbon fiber in bike applications at the Bavarian firm. Company’s R&D head, Karl Viktor Schaller, confirmed the statement while talking to an auto portal MCN. The German manufacturer endowed millions of pounds into not only evolving the technology for use in cars that are on the road  and has also bought a carbon-fiber producing firm in order to meet the demands for their new cars and besides the existing products, i.e., i3, i8 and recently presented 7 series.

Schaller said, “There may well be a number of bikes where carbon-fibre technology can be introduced. We have seen this technology on our cars and these are at a top level. I think this would be the same for bikes. I do not see wide use of carbon-fibre but there are functional designs in carbon that you cannot do in aluminium. At the moment, BMW is doing a lot of research in carbon-fibre for motorcycles."

He further added, “In terms of the way carbon-fibre might be used it’s not a case of simply replacing aluminium castings for the same shape of component built from carbon-fibre. The material works very differently and would need for a complete rethink of how the motorcycle was designed from the start. This has been one of the most surprising elements of the testing and evaluation we have been doing so far. We have found that in certain circumstances carbon-fibre is a lot stronger and better at withstanding crash damage that we thought possible.”

According to reports, we can assume that the company will soon apply this technology in its sports bike like S1000RR, R1200GS. Last week during the 2016 Auto Expo, The German automaker came with its amazing product line-up that included a naked machine BMW R nine T, flagship motorcycle S1000RR, an adventure tourer R1200GS, and also showcased its much-awaited bike G 310 R which is a result of its joint venture with Indian two-wheeler giant, TVS.

Image Source: MCN