Plastic intensive, purpose-built car

Abstract

It is expected that the automotive industry will be facing a radical shift, going from human driven cars to cars that are driving autonomously. In this project I started out with performing an in depth literature research to get a good understanding on what is expected to change. My expectations that the design and solutions for a self-driving car can be motivated by other factors than human controlled cars is confirmed by this research. These incentives of autonomous transportation and the implications are used as input for the development of a vision for a shared autonomous car for the city in ten years. Scenarios that show different possible types of vehicle with different function were created and a twoseater urban commuter vehicle was chosen to develop further. The different functions of the interior, such as doing work or relaxing instead of driving, but also the wish to sit facing forward and looking outside and the need for a sense of dependability and trust because you are not in charge of the car's movement are integrated in the final design. Considering the small footprint combined with a desired seating layout and ergonomic seating position, affects the exterior and makes for challenging design boundaries in terms of volume. This project is a collaboration with raw material supplier SABIC and therefore another consideration is how this changing system affects the plastic material business and how SABIC can influence this change in the future automotive development. The car is being used for the daily commute, but during off-peak hours it can be hailed by other users with similar needs (urban travel with one or two persons and some room for storage). The shared character of the car makes that it is going to be used more intensively than a privately owned car and therefore the material requirements are different. I decided upon a car that uses polycarbonate for the greenhouse and different grades of polypropylene compounds for panels and glass fiber reinforced polypropylene for structural parts. Additionally, the car operates in a system where the fleetowner that deploys the cars and brings the car in for service, can repair worn out or damaged parts by replacing them with new components. With plastics this is more convenient than with metal panels and the replaced parts are recycled and brought back into the system as building blocks for newly manufactured parts. The opportunities and challenges of designing with thermoplastics are identified and accounted for in both the design of the interior and the exterior. Places where different parts meet in the exterior design are showing deliberate transitions, masking the thermal expansion of the plastic components and hiding misalignments when parts are replaced over time. Also the potential of the integration of visual sensors needed for autonomous handling in polycarbonate greenhouse parts is highlighted. In the interior the working and relaxing functions are implemented by showing a clear division between the working side and relaxing side of the car.