Despite the many lies and tons of miss-information on carbon-fiber and electric cars that KiddingNoOne and "slow Eddy" Huntress have posted, weight is the problem and it's what's really killing the Chevy Volt:

http://www.motortrend.com/features/c...e/viewall.html

"The auto industry has a weight problem. For everything from handling to acceleration to fuel economy, the extra pounds our cars have picked up over time is enemy number one. But thanks to recent technological advances and a new willingness to push the envelope, the auto industry is on the verge of solving its weight problem with what are essentially fabrics for cars. "The future is cars made of textiles," said Dr. Joerg Pohlman, BMW's managing director of a joint venture with SGL Carbon. The textiles Pohlman is referring to consist of carbon fiber woven into sheets and then encased in plastic.. The resulting composite, called carbon fiber-reinforced plastic, or CFRP, has long been considered the Holy Grail of vehicle weight reduction."

"Up to this point, mainstream automakers have solved their weight problem by including ever more powerful engines and robust suspension bits, with a touch of aluminum, advanced steel alloys, and new frame construction techniques for good measure. But as stringent new fuel economy standards the world over begin to take hold, adding more powerful engines simply won't cut it. "Over time a lot of additional weight has gone into safety and comfort features," said BMW's Pohlman. "You could take those out and say 'Let's do away with those features,' but quite obviously the customer wouldn't accept that. We need to find solutions to reduce weight without compromising safety, functionality, comfort, entertainment, and all these elements that are rightfully expected by customers."

"Certainly the reduction of weight because of the cost of batteries is a decisive element," said Pohlman, referring to the fact that a lighter electric vehicle would require smaller batteries to move it the same distance as a heavier vehicle. "However, we should not restrict usage of carbon fiber to electric vehicles. All of the automotive industry is faced with tougher emissions standards and reducing weight is obviously a key element to increasing mileage and thus reducing emissions. I think the entire industry will have to go that way."


"The main change is that the familiarity with designing for composites and the manufacturing facilities have progressed quite a bit," said Jon Fox-Rubin, President and CEO of FiberForge, a company working on next-generation carbon fiber products. "It's not until pretty recently that automakers have said they can afford the additional cost of true carbon fiber lightweighting of the primary structure of a vehicle instead of just dabbling in cosmetic panels for marketing purposes."

"If we want to have this weight reduction it is clear to us that the customers won't pay a huge premium over just the fact that the car contains carbon fiber-it will have to be competitively priced," he said. "That's really what BMW is aiming at. Over the last 10 years we've developed the process to the point where we can say we are very competitive when it comes to the overall cost of parts going into a vehicle." In that 10-year period, BMW has spent hundreds of millions of dollars -- and committed hundreds of millions more -- on a make-it-or-break-it gambit to drag carbon fiber into the mainstream, kicking and screaming if it has to. Initially spurred by the 2013 launch date of the i3, BMW envisions eventually using carbon fiber frames in almost everything it sells. BMW Carbon Fiber Spools "The curing times are key, and you're looking at a curing time that's dramatically lower than just a few years ago," said Pohlman. To get to true mainstream affordability, BMW says it's figured out how to reduce curing times to a matter of several minutes-a breakthrough that finally promises to make carbon fiber affordable and practical for mass-production. "The BMW i3 will be affordable," he said. "The price increase for the i3 versus an internal combustion-engined vehicle will mostly be based on the cost of the battery, and not so much on additional costs coming from the usage of carbon fiber."