Electric vehicles offer opportunities for Teijin's SMC

Continental Structural Plastics took two significant steps as summer came to an end: It restructured to become Teijin Automotive Technologies, unifying the worldwide vehicle materials business of the century-old Japanese chemical company Teijin Group under a single organization, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Mich. And it trademarked the name Hexacore.

Hexacore is a new honeycombed plastic structure that represents an advance in lightweighting, strength and design flexibility that will see increased vehicle applications, said CEO Steve Rooney. Teijin Automotive is a leading supplier of composite materials and of electric vehicle battery enclosures. The company has battery enclosures on 15-18 EVs in China and will launch its first in Europe in January. Rooney recently spoke with Lindsay Chappell, news editor of our sister publication Automotive News.

Q: First of all, why did Continental Structural Plastics restructure into Teijin Automotive Technologies?
Rooney: CSP was primarily a North American business, and Teijin acquired it in January 2017. Since then, Teijin has bought other companies around the world. Now we've brought all five businesses under one name so that we can speak to customers with one name and offer the same material solutions globally.

Q: How will it improve your power to innovate?
Rooney: We're doing R&D and advanced development in Europe, in China, in North America — now it's all consolidated under one leadership, focused on satisfying OEM needs globally instead of regionally. We're seeing that automakers are starting to consolidate to global designs, with one product around the world. With BMW on some battery tray business, they have the same design in Europe and China, and they're talking about bringing it to North America.

Q: What is the trend in automotive material, from your perspective?
Rooney: The drive for lightweighting is important. The architecture of vehicles is important, too, as OEMs get into more EVs. But the trend of the past decade is that OEMs are coming out with designs faster and the life of a program is shorter. The volume is less and there are more of them. We're developing Hexacore, a material with a honeycomb interior and thin outer layers of SMC [sheet molding compound]. It offers strength with weight reduction.

We're working on battery systems with a multimaterial approach, with composite, metal and other technology, that will come to market in the next year or two.

Q: Where would you advise a young person to focus on as a hot area of future materials?
Rooney: The bet is on any material that can become lighter and stronger and still be a reasonable cost. If you look at carbon fiber in the market, it offers the strength and light weight that OEMs want, but the cost has been too high. We've focused on developing competitive materials for weight reduction but at a palatable cost.

Q: Your company is supplying battery covers for a number of vehicles. What's the outlook for how those are constructed?
Rooney: When we entered that segment five years ago, there were virtually no test requirements — no thermal runaway, no fire requirements. That's still the case in North America. China and Europe have come out with some stringent thermal runaway testing that your materials have to pass. And we've been able to develop proprietary formulas and composites that meet all those requirements, and as a result we're seeing a fairly significant growth in composite battery covers today. When we went to market five years ago, we knew there'd be other requirements coming.

Q: How would you describe it?
Rooney: It's a composite SMC material, but it has some other proprietary material for thermal runaway protection. In the standard thermal runaway test, a battery implodes and generates an incredible amount of heat. The test is that the box has to contain that and remain whole and prevent fire from spreading to the rest of the vehicle.

Q: Will we see that testing come to the U.S.?
Rooney: I think it will. China's always been the most stringent in testing. But we've seen some recent EV fires here, and I expect thermal runaway testing is coming. I think all OEMs will standardize those tests.