My leisure activities are slowly, but inexorably, becoming a paean to carbon fibre.

I've just made the switch to a carbon fibre hockey stick, after several decades of playing with one hewn of wood. This followed my conversion to carbon fibre badminton and tennis racquets about two decades ago. And now I'm contemplating buying a bicycle with a full carbon frame.

When they come up with a carbon fibre beer bottle, my downtime will be carbon fibre complete.

So all this got me thinking: is it only a matter of time before carbon fibre also becomes mainstream in vehicles?

I put that question, and some others, to Mercedes-Benz. The automaker's SLR McLaren sports cars are built with a carbon fibre composite bodyshell — one of the largest carbon fibre sections found on any production car today. The exotic SLR is certainly a low-volume production car, but it seems to be at ground zero in the efforts to incorporate carbon fibre into “mass-produced” automobiles.

As its name implies, the SLR McLaren is built with more than a little help from M-B's Formula One partner, Britain's McLaren Racing. F1 racing is certainly the big envelope pusher, when it comes to carbon fibre and four wheels.

Experts at McLaren Composites in Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, create the SLR’s bodyshell and then deliver it to the McLaren Technology Centre (also in Portsmouth), where the vehicles are assembled. This is the same facility that builds up McLaren's racecars; those carbon fibre machines are hand-built in a meticulous, slow and extremely expensive process.

So here is James Banks, SLR body function manager, responding to my first question: how are M-B and McLaren able to build the SLR in something other than that “strand-by-strand” manner.

“Traditionally, carbon fibre parts are made from thin pre-impregnated materials that are laid ply-by-ply into a mould by hand. Ply thicknesses vary depending on the reinforcement system but they are typically between 0.1 and 0.5 mm thick. Therefore to build up a section of, say, 2 mm it could take up to 20 plies, each of which must be laid into the mould at very specific angles.

“Mercedes and McLaren have developed material systems that use multi-axial reinforcements, as opposed to the more conventional woven reinforcements found in many composite parts. This allows substantially higher rates of material deposition.

“Parts of the front crash structure are manufactured semi-automatically, utilizing a weaving machine to weave the reinforcements around a mandrel. This process is very much faster than conventional methods, but does rely on fairly specific geometries of part.

“The assembly of the composite parts at McLaren’s facility on the south coast is a very complex process. Here robot technology is employed to bond the parts together. This not only allows increased throughput but also ensures a very repeatable process.”

Do you foresee a time when higher-volume cars could be built with large sections of carbon fibre?

“The composites industry is working very actively toward this goal. The most significant limiting factor is the cost of the raw material, which is extremely high relative to steel or aluminum. The level of integration depends entirely on the application. It is quite feasible that small semi-structural parts could start appearing on production cars within the next few years. It will be longer before we see the same take-up as seen on the SLR on a typical higher volume car.”

Could carbon fibre effectively replace most metals in an automobile?

“Composite components in hot areas such as the engine bay or exhaust system tend to be a problem. The resin systems used in most composites tend not to perform well at high temperatures, resulting in a decline in the material's mechanical properties. There will always be areas of a car that require very high heat resistance that will be made of metal for the foreseeable future.”

What is the nature of the base material that factories use to make carbon fibre parts?

“The two main parts of a carbon fibre composite are the resin system and the fibre. The most traditional materials, pre-pregs, are supplied as a “wet” fabric on a roll. This is supplied frozen owing to the resin system’s reactive nature. Advances in the integration of the two constituent parts of the composite material have resulted in more and more applications where the carbon fibres are delivered dry on the roll, with the resin being delivered directly into the mould in processes similar to injection moulding.”

Any other thoughts on the future use of carbon fibre in automobiles?

“Personally, I believe carbon fibre crash systems and class A bodywork are the two areas of the automobile that are likely to see the biggest advances in the coming years.”

If you don’t believe James on how well carbon fibre is predisposed to the safety thing, cast your mind back to this year’s Canadian Grand Prix, where BMW Sauber driver, Robert Kubica, crashed his carbon fibre racecar into a solid concrete wall at over 250 km/h, and survived, virtually unscathed (though predictably shaken).

In addition to its massive strength for its weight, carbon fibre has another very appealing aspect of its personality — it looks great. The woven nature of the material is somehow both natural and high-tech at the same time.

What would make it even more angelic, is if it could be made of unwanted carbon, the stuff we’re sending up into the atmosphere. James is not aware of any technology in that regard, and I’ve not heard of any either, at least not until I get my next issue of Carbon Today!

But boy, wouldn’t that be great? Sort of like having your cake and eating it too. A very hard, durable cake, no doubt, and one that would certainly have extremely high levels of torsional rigidity.

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One last thing. We have a new Web site address — www.worldofwheelsmagazine.com. Our original address, wheels.ca, has been commandeered by our corporate cousin — The Toronto Star — for its Wheels section. But we’re still accessible there by clicking on the World of Wheels icon. Whatever the route, check us out.