Carbon Fiber

Visitors to the recent Design Miami fair had the opportunity to see automaker Audi’s R18 Ultra Chair, a lightweight unit designed by Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram, who in 2010 collaborated with Audi on the OUTRACE robotics installation set up in Trafalgar Square in London.  Read More

Rizoma is an Italian company, best known for manufacturing premium motorcycle accessories. Recently, however, it ventured into the world of bicycle-making. The result is a carbon fiber commuting bike, known as the 77/011. While it has no one revolutionary feature, the whole package is pretty snazzy – and it’s priced accordingly.  Read More

Carbon fiber is the choice material for fast vehicles of all types - from track-only race cars, to stunning concept cars, to ultralight bicycles and, apparently, to snow sleds. The Snolo Stealth-X is a high-performance carbon fiber sled for powder hounds that want to get their snow thrills sitting down.  Read More

When people need a material that’s strong yet lightweight, they usually look to carbon fiber. In the near future, however, they may instead choose to go with composite materials made from stretched carbon nanotubes. These materials could theoretically offer the same strength as carbon fiber at one-tenth the weight, or the same weight at ten times the strength. Researchers from North Carolina State University have recently succeeded in creating such a composite.  Read More

The UBC coren is what happens when creative minds get to run amok without the usual constraints imposed by reality. The new single speed bicycle combines a unique shape, belt drive and plenty of high-tech composite.  Read More

The McLaren P1 has arrived ... almost. We've already had a glimpse of the company's brand-new halo supercar but as it's still at design study stage, specs have yet to be finalized – and McLaren isn't providing any official clues on a few things that folks are more than a little curious about. Still, we now have some more details (and more pictures to drool over) than we had before.  Read More

The Forest Products Laboratory of the US Forest Service has opened a US$1.7 million pilot plant for the production of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) from wood by-products materials such as wood chips and sawdust. Prepared properly, CNCs are stronger and stiffer than Kevlar or carbon fibers, so that putting CNC into composite materials results in high strength, low weight products. In addition, the cost of CNCs is less than ten percent of the cost of Kevlar fiber or carbon fiber. These qualities have attracted the interest of the military for use in lightweight armor and ballistic glass (CNCs are transparent), as well as companies in the automotive, aerospace, electronics, consumer products, and medical industries.  Read More

The partnership between BMW's DesignworksUSA and NeilPryde that began in 2010 with the Alize and Diablo high performance road bikes has yielded its latest design. The third line of frames resulting from the partnership are the new Bayamo and Bayamo+, which take on board concepts developed and tested on the earlier models. Aimed at time trial athletes and triathletes, their creators say the bikes are lightweight and high strength, with “wind-cheating aerodynamics.”  Read More

Lenovo has now announced an imminent availability window for its gorgeous and lightweight ThinkPad X1 Carbon.  Read More