Ford GT350R Shelby Gets Standard Carbon Fiber Rims

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

Originally published Kompulsa.

Carbon fiber wheels have long been known for their ability to reduce vehicle weight, resulting in improved fuel/energy efficiency and performance that will make both performance enthusiasts and conservationists happy. Weight reduction (alongside drag coefficient reduction) is one of the holy grails of performance enhancements, as well as efficiency enhancements. A combination of high performance and high efficiency is very difficult to achieve (unless the car is electric).

The Ford Shelby GT350R's carbon fiber wheel.
The Ford Shelby GT350R’s new carbon fiber wheel.
Image obtained with thanks from Ford.

Now, the Ford Shelby GT350R Mustang has gotten its first mass-produced carbon fiber wheels, thanks to a partnership with Carbon Revolution. Carbon Revolution claims that their wheels are 40–50% lighter than aluminium ones, weighing in at 18 pounds each. Car wheels can easily weigh 20–40 pounds each, making them a considerable contributor to a vehicle’s weight. The lightweight carbon fiber wheels also help by reducing rotational inertia (inertia is an object’s resistance to a change in velocity, such as acceleration).

Green Car Congress comments:

‘reated specifically for motorsport and aerospace applications where extreme temperature conditions are encountered, Carbon Revolution’s thermal barrier coating system uses a multistage, multimaterial coating formulation that provides an excellent thermal barrier.

Using a plasma arc gun to liquefy a ceramic material, the wheels are coated at critical points around the inner wheel ‘barrel’ and on the back of the spokes. The result is a thin, nearly diamond-hard coating that reliably shields the resin from heat—reducing maximum wheel temperatures and allowing continuous track use by even the most aggressive drivers.’ The coating had to be developed to meet Ford’s durability requirements.

Carbon fiber wheels aren’t only useful to sports cars like the Ford Shelby GT350R, of course. Weight reductions provide performance improvements to any type of vehicle. Carbon fiber technologies have been gradually making their way into the mainstream. If the cost of these composite material technologies come down enough in the near future, you may see some very lightweight cars in your lifetime!


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Nicholas Brown

Has a keen interest in physics-intensive topics such as electricity generation, refrigeration and air conditioning technology, energy storage, and geography. His website is: Kompulsa.com.

Nicholas Brown has 594 posts and counting. See all posts by Nicholas Brown