MUNICH—BMW Group and its material supplier, BComp Ltd., recently received the 2024 Altair Enlighten Award in the sustainable process category for a lightweight seat made out of flax fiber composites. The BMW M Visionary Materials Seat is produced with Bcomp’s ampliTex bio-based materials.
The award-winning seat design re-envisions the manufacture and component materials to introduce a lighter, circular product that meets the demands of large-scale vehicle production. The seatback features a fully bio-based, high-performance natural fiber layup.
“We are already using existing technologies and materials to provide an outlook on the possibilities for reducing emissions and conserving resources in the future,” says Falco Hollmann, innovation manager for lightweight construction and sustainability at BMW. “This is not just about the substitution of materials, but above all about the topic of design for circularity.
“By combining the structural and aesthetically pleasing visual properties of the material in one manufacturing step, production is both more efficient and dematerialized,” explains Hollmann. “The accent has been on design for circularity, meaning that in addition to using natural and recycled materials…recyclability has been taken into account right from the start of development."
According to Hollmann, less complex assemblies and materials that can be separated by type enable the recyclability of the seat at the end of its life.
Flax fiber composites are carbon-neutral from cradle to grave and can reduce manufacturing-related emissions of high-performance composite parts by up to 85 percent compared to carbon fiber. Compared to current large-scale automotive plastic parts, Hollmann claims that the materials can reduce component weight by up to 50 percent, due to their low density and high stiffness.
