Rinspeed eXasis

Future vehicles not only will have fuel sipping engines, but they’ll also have to go on a weight reduction diet to get significantly better mpg while also producing fewer emissions, including greenhouse gases. However, weight reduction cannot come at the expense of compromises in safety or comfort. The answer will likely come from new lightweight materials like advanced composites and plastics, something that Bayer MaterialScience emphasized with the unveiling of the eXasis concept car at the 2007 Geneva Motor Show.

“Cars must become even lighter to save CO2, and you can’t achieve this without modern plastics,” says Ian Paterson, responsible for Marketing and Innovation at Bayer MaterialScience. “Just as important, environmentally compatible cars must be seen as fun, otherwise no one would buy them.”

The two-seat roadster was designed and developed with the assistance of Frank M. Rinderknecht’s Rinspeed. This Swiss-based specialty, custom, and prototype car builder is noted for its performance tuning of Porsches and BMWs. It’s also the source of some pretty wild concept cars, as noted in the article on Rinspeed’s natural gas-powered Senso on our Features page.

With its load-bearing aluminum chassis and extensive use of lightweight plastics in its construction, the eXasis weighs just 1650 pounds. The body and floor are made of transparent Bayer MaterialScience plastic Makrolon polycarbonate. Two occupants sit in tandem in special Recaro seats with a dozen transparent Makrolon PC ribs. Head restraints and armrests are made of transparent Technogel, a lightfast, elastic, and plasticizer-free polyurethane gel, which feels soft and warm and makes the seats particularly comfortable.

Aluminized glass fiber materials are used for wheel rims, trim, wishbones, fuel tank, and headlamps. Other high-tech plastics like Desmopan thermoplastic polyurethane, Baytron P polymer, Makrofol PC film, and Bayblend PC/ABS blends are used for cable sheathing, touch panels, instrument displays, and other components.

Performance is not compromised by the eXasis’ lightweight nature even though it is powered by a two-cylinder, 750 cc Weber engine running on E85 ethanol. The extremely lightweight engine makes 150 horsepower, giving the eXasis a top speed of 130 mph and acceleration that takes the car from 0 to 62 mph in about 4.8 seconds. It gets 37 mpg on E85 or 52 mpg on gasoline.

Needless to say, the eXasis is not destined for production, but built to showcase the use of advanced lightweight materials…thus the reason for its transparent body panels.