As the most popular material in supercars and racing cars, why is carbon fiber so expensive?

If you have followed the news of sports cars, you should be familiar with the term carbon fiber because super sports cars and motorsports all like to use carbon fiber as the material of the car body. It is almost the darling of super running. As long as it is related to it, it must be. It is a very high-end model. In other fields, carbon fiber is also used. Do you know what kind of material carbon fiber is? Why is it so popular?

The "darling" of supercar manufacturing materials, carbon fiber, has many advantages, but one disadvantage makes it difficult to popularize.

In everyone's impression, carbon fiber seems to be a relatively modern material. It has been around for a long time used in cars as early as the 1950s. It was first used on a Chevrolet model. The carbon content of this material is very high, can reach more than 95%, and is fibrous, so it is called carbon fiber.

Advantages:

Carbon fiber is favored by sports cars because of its many advantages. For example, its weight is very light; its importance is much lower than the same metal material. Moreover, supercars and racing cars are all pursuing the ultimate performance. Based on ensuring strength, reducing weight has become a problem for engineers to explore. For example, the steel structure was used in the earliest stage, and then aluminum-titanium alloy was invented, and then there was carbon fiber. The weight can reach about one-third of the previous weight. The performance of the car has been dramatically improved as the weight is continuously reduced.

Although carbon fiber sounds very brittle, its strength is very high. Compared with materials of the same quality, its power is several times higher. Therefore, based on ensuring lightweight, it can also maximize after a collision. To protect the safety of the occupants in the cabin. Especially in sports cars, the use of this material is more valuable. Moreover, carbon fiber is not metal; it is hardly corrupted and will not change for many years, so it is much better than metal materials, and it is also resistant to high temperature and low temperature and has a very long service life, which can improve the ultimate performance of the car. It can also be used generally under extreme conditions.

Disadvantages:

Although carbon fiber has so many advantages, it is not perfect, and it also has some significant disadvantages. For example, carbon fiber is a material with very poor plasticity. It has no elasticity and flexibility. Unlike metal, it can be repaired after a collision. And the carbon fiber has a crash, and if there is a crack, it must be replaced in one piece. This is why the maintenance cost after a supercar collision is high because the whole shell needs to be replaced. After all, it breaks a little bit.

This explains why carbon fiber is so good; why not use it in ordinary cars. The main reason is that carbon fiber production is difficult and expensive, and standard vehicles are not suitable at all. However, after the future upgrade of carbon fiber technology, perhaps ordinary people can also afford it.

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