Going by the present day fuel prices, any improvement of just one or two miles per gallon can really add up to the pocket. To turn this efficiency into consumers’ advantage, auto companies are looking into ways to make their cars more fuel efficient or introduce greener and eco-friendly modifications.
We know from our Physics lessons that reducing vehicle weight helps in enhancing fuel efficiency. This theoretical notion has caught up with the fancy of many auto companies and is now exercising it practically by using the new technology called Mucell which makes the plastic parts used for making automobiles super strong but extra light.
Auto makers, including Ford and Cadillac, are keen to introduce this Mucell or bubble technology to reduce about ten percent of the vehicle weight and make it more fuel efficient and promote their ‘sustainable’ efforts better.
The MIT-developed MuCell’s micro-cellular foaming technology injects tiny bubbles of non-uniform bubbles of nitrogen or carbon gas into the molded industrial-grade plastic parts whereby the plastic becomes much lighter while still maintaining its durability and performance. The technology helps an average car shed about 250-750 pounds of its likely weight.
The technology, currently owned by Trexel, is being tried out by the Ford manufacturing and research unit for the last ten years and the results seem to have pleased the officials so well that Ford now plans to incorporate MuCell-made plastic in all its cars by 2020.
Apart from reducing vehicle weight by improving vehicle packaging, the bubble-infused plastic designs will hopefully also reduce the usage of plastics as bubbles would fill all empty spaces instead of hard molded plastic thus resulting in no loss of functionality.
However, how far this new interesting approach to greener initiative is actually sustainable is a further matter of discussion, along with issues of safety and recycling facilities.
