This week I’m experiencing the dynamic engineering plastic market at Chinaplas 2018 in Shanghai. It is the largest plastics and rubber show in Asia, and widely recognized by the industry as one of the most influential exhibitions in the world. The show gathers around 4,000 exhibitors from 40 countries that showcase their latest innovations. DSM is also present with a futuristic booth (located at Hall 7.2, Booth No.: D71) where we show a broad range of material solutions that meet present and future product development demands in the automotive and electronic industries.
One particular trend I noticed here was how the merge of the automotive and electrical & electronics industry inspired material suppliers to innovate more than ever. As the automotive industry is currently facing a major disruptive transition towards digital mobility, digitization is leading to a massive conversion of the traditional automotive industry with electronics, making the car of the future literally a smartphone on four wheels.
At our booth we even installed a virtual reality station to spell out the future: all the individual parts of the vehicle - under the hood, inside the passenger compartment, on the exterior - will be connected via smart electronic devices, all of them integrated within an overall “intelligent” design. Connected cars will drastically change the way people drive, just as smartphones have changed the way people communicate!
Through developing an HV component, e-motor and battery for a new energy car, we continue to scale new heights in material technology for the automotive industry. A key challenge for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in this context will be the need to develop next-generation cars filled to the brim with advanced electronics. The more electronics in a car, the more it weighs, but cars need to be lighter in order to burn less fuel and have lower CO2 emissions. This need to cut weight is even more critical when applied to electric vehicles, which have a much lower range than cars powered by internal combustion engines.
At Chinaplas, my colleague Martin Chen and I had the honor to host one of the Tech Seminars to discuss answers to this dilemma. We presented our latest flagship, ForTii Ace MX53T (PA4T, GF50), a material that enables metal replacement in parts that were not possible up to now, giving engineers a new reliable solution for their challenges, while at the same time giving designers even more freedom to realize increasingly complex designs. More information can be found here.
As you can see, we are working on innovative sustainable, high-performance materials that enable thinwall and lightweighting concepts in order to define the future of automotive!
Global Market Development Manager ForTii at DSM Engineering Materials
25 April 2018
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Global Market Development Manager ForTii at DSM Engineering Materials
Tim Vorage is Global Market Development Manager at DSM. He joined DSM in 2005 and has worked in various technical and commercial roles. Tim holds a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology.
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