An article on Plastics Today, referencing comments from consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, suggests that countries which are serious about reducing transportation CO2 emissions should restrict cars entering city centers to a maximum weight of 500 kg (1100 lb).

Reportlinker.com has announced the launch of a new market research report is available entitled “Lightweight Materials in Transportation“. This report is an update of a BCC Research report published in early 2011. The overall goal of this report is to provide an up-to-date assessment of the business opportunities for providers of lightweight materials that will arise over the next five years.

With the end of 2012 fast approaching, we thought you’d like to see our most popular stories, blog posts and articles from over the last twelve months. We’ll be back reporting the latest innovations, insights and news from the world of lightweight design in January 2013. Thank you for your support and from everyone at Altair, have a great holiday season.

TenCate Advanced Composites has been successful in qualifying to supply carbon fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composite material for an unspecified but leading global automotive customer. Now that the customer-specific development phase for a structural automotive application has been completed, marking the end of the qualification process, structural integrity tests of the final product begin.

Following on from Lotus’ successful ‘Phase One’ study, published in 2010, which looked at the empirical and theoretical weight saving for a standard CUV, Lotus Engineering conducted further research to confirm if a lightweight and commercially feasible body structure has the potential to meet or exceed the requirements for size, luggage volume, comfort, crashworthiness and structural integrity.

Boeing and the BMW Group signed a collaboration agreement to participate in joint research on carbon fiber recycling and share knowledge about carbon fiber materials and manufacturing.

Lockheed Martin has partnered with research engineers at the University of Surrey to look into new lighter weight methods of improving the protection and survivability of armoured vehicles. The focus of the research has been ceramic materials and how they can improve protection levels on vehicles such as those used in operational environments by the UK army and special forces.