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*From the September 2011 issue of Plastics Engineering

By Jennifer Markarian

The driving force for using plastics composites in automotive applications is the ability to reduce weight by replacing metal.  As government mandates for fuel efficiency become increasingly strict, automakers ask the question again, “What else can we replace?”, and composites are proving their capability in more applications.   As composites show they can replace metal to not only save weight, but also to increase design freedom and save production costs, the industry is seeing more commercial activity using existing composite technologies as well as new developments taking composites to the next level.