Strong, Light Car Parts Made With Wood Pulp Could Soon Be A Thing

If you contemplate the usage wood in the construction of cars, you’ll no doubt have something like an ash-framed Morgan in your mind, perhaps some posh pieces of trim on the inside of a posh saloon, or maybe some bizarre creation seen on Top Gear/The Grand Tour (above). However, a group of Japanese researchers have a rather different application in mind.

It’s all about cellulose nanofibers, reports Reuters. This is made using chemically-treated wood pulp, which is broken down into several hundredths of a micron. The nanofibres are then “neaded” into plastics. The result is a material that is five times as strong as steel, yet weighs only a fifth as much.

Sounds rather interesting, but it will be a while before the material - the work of researchers at Kyoto University - becomes viable. It currently costs around £7 per kg to produce, compared to about £1.50 per kg for steel. Carbonfibre on the other hand is set to drop to under £8 per kg by 2025.

Research leader Hiroyuki Yano reckons the cost of the cellulose nanofiber material should be halved by 2030, making it a viable alternative to the likes of carbonfibre and aluminium. It’d presumably also be competing with the recycled carbonfibre material currently used in the BMW i3 and i8 (above) plus the Zenos E10 range, which can be produced at a tenth of the cost of ‘virgin’ CF.

Lightweight materials are going to become much more prevalent in car construction in the next few decades, as manufacturers look to drop the weight of their vehicles to reduce emissions, as well as offset the installation of bulky battery cells.

We’ll be watching the work of Yano and his team with interest…