BMW Group and Bcomp win award for seat material

Manufactured with Bcomp’s ampliTex^™ biobased materials, the seat won in the Sustainable Process category. The award highlights the sustainable production-orientation of the seat design including its lifecycle focus as one of the global automotive sector’s most innovative new sustainable developments, the best of which are showcased by Altair’s prestigious Enlighten Awards.

Falco Hollmann, Innovation Manager Lightweight Construction & Sustainability at BMW M, accepted the award, saying,“We are already using existing technologies and materials to provide an outlook on the possibilities for reducing emissions and conserving resources in the future. This is not just about the substitution of materials, but above all about the topic of design for circularity.”

The award-winning seat design re-envisions the manufacture and component materials to introduce a lighter, circular product that meets the demands of large-scale vehicle production. The seatback features a fully biobased, high-performance natural fibre layup with ampliTex^™-PP composite. By combining the structural and aesthetically pleasing visual properties of the material in one manufacturing step, production is both more efficient and dematerialised.

The accent has been on Design for Circularity, meaning that in addition to using natural and recycled materials, the BMW M Visionary Materials Seat’s recyclability has been taken into account right from the start of development. Less complex assemblies and monomaterials that can be separated by type enable the recyclability of the seat at the end of its life. Flax fibre composites are CO₂e-neutral from cradle to gate, and can reduce manufacturing-related emissions of high-performance composite parts by up to 85 % compared to carbon fibre, depending on the application. Compared to current large-scale automotive plastic parts, Bcomp’s material solutions can reduce component weights by up to 50 %, thanks to their low density and high stiffness.

The seat is a development project designed and engineered by long-time collaborators, BMW M and Bcomp, along with BMW Designworks, Automotive Management Consulting, Gradel Lightweight Sàrl and Lasso Ingenieurgesellschaft. BMW M and Bcomp have already delivered exciting innovations in previous development projects for high-end road cars and series application for race cars, such as interior and bodywork components for the BMW M4 GT4, bodywork for the BMW M4 DTM, and cooling shafts for the BMW iFE.20 in Formula E. The success of their partnership is built on shared beliefs in the need for new sustainable technologies that combine circular, high-performance and sustainable materials with a re-imagined architecture that will help defossilse volume automotive manufacturing.

“Realising your vision requires strong partnerships, and we all need visionaries to achieve our common sustainability goals”, said Johann Wacht, Key Account Manager Automotive & Motorsports at Bcomp. “Through our long-standing collaboration with BMW M, the BMW M Visionary Materials Seat project clearly shows that the decisive milestone towards holistic sustainability is the combination of biobased materials and recyclables. With our ampliTex^™ high-performance natural fibre material, we deliver a sustainable lightweight solution that combines the highest design standards and recyclability on a large-scale automotive level.”
The annual Enlighten Awards are sponsored by Altair, a global leader in computational science and intelligence. They celebrate lightweighting innovations that reduce emissions, materials and energy consumption, while advancing material reuse and recyclability. The winning technologies are of significant interest to automotive engineers, manufacturers, policymakers, and consumers. The Awards were presented at a ceremony on August 6. AT

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