Global Website | HOME

Skip over visual

The lighter side of saving

ROHACELL® lowers the weight of vehicles, thus reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

Skip over functional column

Cars like it light

The car of the future doesn’t yet fly—but its lightweight construction owes something to aircraft design anyway. The rear spoiler of a RED Motorsport Lotus Exige weighs next to nothing, and a particularly sporty BMW X5 is fitted with a hood weighing as little as 5.9 kilograms, compared with the 20.3 kilograms of the sheet metal original.

Structural foam as core material

The secret behind the lightness? The inside of both the spoiler and the hood consists of ROHACELL®, an extremely rigid, but lightweight, structural foam made from PMI (polymethacrylimide), which is used as a core material for sandwich constructions. The core is glued between two outer layers of high-strength plastic reinforced by carbon or fiberglass.

ROHACELL® in aviation

This results in extremely rigid and lightweight shaped parts with high stress resistance, which is exactly what's needed in other areas of application, too. ROHACELL® is used not only on the ground but also in the air, to make aircraft, helicopters, and spacecraft lighter.

Lightness is key

In ROHACELL®, Evonik holds a trump card for reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions: the lighter the car, the less fuel it consumes. Moreover, ROHACELL® minimizes the resources used in production and increases energy efficiency in operation.