Thursday, December 18, 2008

Toyota develops plant-based resins for car interiors


Toyota Motor Corp has developed a number of new plant-based resins that can be used as automotive interior materials for scuff plates, seat cushions, etc. The resins will be used in new hybrid cars to be released in 2009.

Toyota plan
s to employ the resins for more parts in more types of vehicles, aiming to make 60% of the surface area of all interior parts with them.


The new plant
-based resins were developed by employing a variety of composite manufacturing technologies such as the ones for binding and/or blending molecules of plant-based materials to those of petroleum-based materials.


With those tech
nologies, Toyota succeeded in manufacturing resins for automotive interior parts, which are required to be higher in heat resistance and collision resistance compared with other resin products. In addition, the company improved production technologies so as to attain the quality and mass productivity equivalent to those of the products that use petroleum-based resins. As a result, the plant-based resins became applicable to stock cars, Toyota said.


Toyota adopte
d 100% plant-based plastic, Eco-Plastic, produced from materials such as polylactate for the spare tire cover and the floor mat of the "Raum," which was released in May 2003.


Source: Tech-On

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