The German firm, BMW has confirmed about the plans of working upon carbon fibre chassis technology in motorcycle applications, and the job is underway at the Bavarian farm. Karl Viktor Schaller, who is in charge of all bike and research development at BMW upholds the news.
BMW has put about millions of pounds to develop the technology to be used in road cars, and it is not just that. The automaker has also acquired a carbon fibre manufacturing company for raising up the demands of their new four-wheelers, namely, i3, i8 and the new i7 series.
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Schaller conveyed, “There may well be a number of bikes where carbon-fibre technology can be introduced. We have seen this technology on our cars and these are at a top level. I think this would be the same for bikes. I do not see wide use of carbon-fibre but there are functional designs in carbon that you cannot do in aluminium. At the moment BMW is doing a lot of research in carbon-fibre for motorcycles.
“In terms of the way carbon-fibre might be used it’s not a case of simply replacing aluminium castings for the same shape of component built from carbon-fibre. The material works very differently and would need for a complete rethink of how the motorcycle was designed from the start. This has been one of the most surprising elements of the testing and evaluation we have been doing so far. We have found that in certain circumstances carbon-fibre is a lot stronger and better at withstanding crash damage that we thought possible.”