Toray Industries, Inc. (head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Akihiro Nikkaku; hereinafter referred to as “Toray”) today announced that its carbon fiber material was adopted by MIRAI, a fuel cell vehicle to be introduced in December this year by Toyota Motor Corporation (head office: Toyota, Aichi Prefecture; President: Akio Toyota, hereinafter referred to as “Toyota”). Toray’s carbon fiber materials used in MIRAI are (1) carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic (CFRTP) developed for automobile structural parts, (2) carbon paper for electrode substrate of fuel cell stack and (3) high strength carbon fiber for high pressure hydrogen tank.
The CFRTP is used in a part called “STACK FRAME”, which is equivalent for the vehicle floor. Toray, together with Toyota, developed CFRTP which achieves short press molding time suitable for mass production by leveraging the characteristics of thermoplastic. It is the first time in the world that CFRTP is used in the structural part of a (mass) production vehicle.
The carbon paper Toray has been developing for more than 30 years was adopted for the electrode substrate of fuel cell stack, which is the heart of a fuel cell vehicle. This carbon paper meets prescribed properties such as gas diffusion and durability and contributes to improvement of the fuel cell stack performance and space saving.
Further, MIRAI’s high pressure hydrogen tank uses the high strength carbon fiber Toray has developed specifically for high pressure hydrogen tanks, which satisfies the safety, strength and light weight requirements of such tanks.
Under its management policy that all business strategies must place priority on the global environment in an effort to help realize a sustainable low-carbon society, Toray aims to solve the global environmental problems as well as resource and energy issues to contribute to the realization of a sustainable low-carbon society. Furthermore, Toray will focus on expansion of its advanced material business in the growing markets to achieve its corporate philosophy of “Contributing to society through the creation of new value with innovative ideas, technologies and products” in the Green Innovation Business Expansion (GR) Project, one of the group-wide projects under the medium-term management program “Project AP-G 2016” launched in April 2014. The Toray Group will promote energy savings by reducing the weight of aircrafts and automobiles by using carbon fiber composite materials and continue to accelerate its technology development for automobile applications.
*Source: research by Toray as of November 2014.
＜Toray’s carbon fiber materials used in MIRAI＞
