DuPont China: Lightweight Materials Reduce Weight for Automobile

Company Profile

DuPont is a science company dedicated to solving challenging global problems with science-based products and services. Founded in 1802, DuPont is committed to creating sustainable solutions through Science, delivering better, safer and healthier life to people, and meets the ever-changing market needs of diverse industries in more than 90 countries, involving multiple fields including agriculture and food, new energy, bio-technology through its extensive innovative products and services. Alongside that, DuPont has been among the first group of Fortune 500 companies that came to China since China implemented its reform and openingup policy. Over 30 years’ relentless efforts, DuPont has hired over 6,000 employees in its 40 wholly owned and joint ventures in China, with its products and services covering various industries, like agriculture, food and nutrition, electronics, energy, automobile, public transportation, etc.
Challenges
As one of the major measures to achieve energy conservation and environmental protection, automotive lightweight technology could reduce gas consumption of automobiles. According to the statistics of DuPont Global Automotive Development and Support Center, if the total weight of automobile is reduced by 50 kilos, the gas efficiency could be enhanced by 2%, and the carbon dioxide emissions could be cut by 5 grams every kilometer.
Thanks to the steady growth of Chinese automotive market, China’s enormous market capacity as well as the stricter requirements for lightweight technology, Chinese automotive market has been one of the most important markets pursued by global chemical material giants. With mature technology in plastics and high-performance raw materials, it is urgent for DuPont to meet the increasing demand of Chinese customers to face the challenges in automotive industry.
Solutions
For years, DuPont has been devoted to developing high-performance technology and leading the world in the application of related technologies in this field. In terms of automotive industry’s demand and trend in China, DuPont has defined 8 major research fields including lightweight, and introduced a number of related technologies and products to China.
Local Research
In April, 2011, DuPont Automotive Center was officially launched in Shanghai, dedicated to providing one-stop service of integrated design, application and development for automotive manufacturers. The center sets up 3 labs with distinctive functions for material development, mold molding, and automotive component performance and reliability testing. The center utilizes DuPont global R & D network to provide customers with world leading solutions to cope with challenges, for example, challenge in lightweight, to satisfy the need for a rapidly growing Chinese automotive market.
Cooperation with Local Automotive Enterprises
As a world leading partner in automotive industry, DuPont has been making collaborative innovation with enterprises at every link of the automobile industrial chain and providing materials and products that could achieve high efficiency, energy conservation, stability and safety. DuPont mainly offers support to automobile industrial partners in fields like design support, material development and technological process. Take its cooperation with Chery as an example.
The cooperation started from 2005, and both parties set up the “Chery-DuPont Collaborative Lab of New Material Technological Research & Application” in 2010. Due to the joint advantages, DuPont and Chery are committed to the innovative material development in automotive field.
DuPont High-Performance Polymers Department provides high-performance engineer plastics and rubber for Chery to produce components, develops innovative plan to achieve automobile lightweight. Moreover, the coordination has expanded to multiple fields, such as product function integration, cost structure optimization and component performance improvement, etc.
Achievements
Established in 2011, the DuPont Automotive Center has enormously improved R & D capacity of DuPont’s automobile innovative projects in China. Through the close cooperation with local customers, the center quickly responds to the market demand, and achieves one-stop service of material development, mold molding and automotive component performance and reliability testing.
DuPont’s lightweight solution for Chery taxis demonstrates its advantages in energy conservation and emissions reduction. The specific type of car adopts multiple advanced materials of DuPont to manufacture components to replace the original metal components. As a result, the car weight has been cut by 30%-40%, gas efficiency increased and carbon dioxide emissions reduced. For taxi drivers, this move improves the performance of the car, and more importantly, this helps them cut gas costs and increase income.
Thanks to the sound performance of the new materials, the application of lightweight materials has become one of the two rapidly growing fields in DuPont’s Greater China area in recent years.
Prospect
Currently technology has been increasingly mature in European market and applying in massive industrial production. In China, there are more and more suppliers and car manufactures pay their attention to the application of the technology, and develop related products. Meanwhile, Chinese government advocates energy conservation and emissions reductions of automotive industry. DuPont will continue to make joint efforts with its partners to make innovations to promote the application of the technology and products in China.