JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #137 - November/December 2020 - 39

FEATURE
EV

All-composite EV wheel moves to next
development phase with pilot production
ACRIM-Wheel, the world's first commercially-viable, low-cost,
lightweight all-composite wheel for niche and electric vehicle
applications, moves to the next phase of development with the
manufacture of fifty wheels by the end of the year.
Edward Allnutt,
(Lead project partner)
Managing Director
Carbon ThreeSixty

A

Development and validation
The consortium delivering the wheel,
comprising Carbon ThreeSixty, FarUK, Composite Integration and CNC
Robotics, alongside Bitrez Ltd as the
preferred resin formulator, has completed the second phase of the programme
- development and validation of proofof-concept ACRIM wheels - which
confirmed the feasibility of achieving
significant cost reductions over existing
global market offerings.
The work being undertaken will enable
wider access to key lightweighting
technologies for the lower-volume niche
automotive manufacturers. The product
development consortium previously
made a number of key findings, with a

"The world's first all-composite wheel for
electric and niche vehicles has moved a
major step forward, and we can confidently say it has the ability to deliver huge cost
savings over anything on the market. It
can also be manufactured in volume and
gives OEMs huge flexibility in what they
can specify. This is truly a quantum leap
in wheel design and manufacture."
A multi-strand approach
For the next phase, which kicked off this
summer, the consortium aims to decrease
manufacturing cost and cycle time with
a multi-strand approach. Avenues include processing of a three-component
epoxy resin system with an in-mould
release agent, piston pump technology
to deliver repeatable and higher quality
lamination through increased control
and monitoring of the preconditioning
of resin prior to injection (metering,
mixing, pre-heating and degassing),

The production scale-up project also
aims to prove that robotic machining can
be sufficiently accurate and repeatable
for secondary machining and final trimming, with fast and flexible operation
that opens the door to reduced skilled
labour content.
The product is evolving too - the consortium is optimising the design of the
part to minimum weight and cost with an
automatic analysis of manufacturability,

Feature Automotive

dditionally, three full vehicle
sets are destined for proving
on MOTIV®, a unique and
versatile autonomous mobility vehicle
using Gordon Murray Design's iStream
Superlight® technology, and two sets of
world-first overmoulded RTM wheels
are headed for qualification testing.

highlight being that the modular concept
of ACRIM offers unrivalled flexibility in
the styling and configuration of lightweight all-composite wheels. This puts
it firmly on track to reduce the weight
of, for example, a 15" wheel by 50%,
which would deliver 5% fuel savings or a
5% CO2 reduction when retrofitted to a
petrol or diesel-fuelled vehicle.

/ jec composites magazine

39

ACRIM-Wheel, the world's first commercially viable,
low cost, lightweight, all composite wheel for niche
and electric vehicle applications

and a mould-pressure closed-loop control
system to improve yield.

N°137 November - December 2020
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #137 - November/December 2020

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