"The  bumper of a certain brand of car is actually made of plastic, too  pitted!" I believe many people have seen such comments on the Internet. In fact, with the trend of lightweighting, the front and rear bumpers of almost all passenger cars are now made of plastic. A  lot of exterior parts with metallic luster that look like "iron" are  actually made of plastic. It can only be said that our consumers'  understanding of the car is not enough. So, what is the current status of plastics in automotive exterior parts? With questions, the reporter interviewed the cattle product engineer of the FAW-Volkswagen Technology Development Department. He  said that in the light of the low-carbon environment, more and more  automotive exterior parts will be replaced by plastics in the future. Among them, super weather-resistant and spray-free plastic will be the general trend of the development of exterior plastics.
Plastic exteriors are becoming mainstream
Plastics  are increasingly favored in the manufacture of automotive exterior  parts due to their obvious weight-reducing effects, strong plasticity  and strong corrosion resistance. According  to the Niu Yuanhui, in the current automotive exterior parts, the front  and rear bumpers, the mirror housing, the lamp housing, the radiator  grille, the column plate and many other components have been maturely  applied with plastic. Among them, PP, ABS, ASA and glass fiber plastics are widely used. Of  course, these plastics must meet safety requirements, and their  performance must meet the requirements of automotive exterior parts,  such as rigidity, flexibility, weather resistance, etc., but also  through functional test, low-speed collision and other test  requirements.
Under  the general trend of low-carbon environmental protection, energy saving  and emission reduction, the application of plastic exterior parts for  automobiles will be further deepened. Niu  Yuanhui believes that with the development of materials technology,  some sheet metal parts in automobile exteriors are gradually replaced by  plastics. For example, many automakers are now trying to apply plastics  to fenders and tailgates.
However, plastics still have many problems in the application process. For  example, today's thin wall thickness has become a major trend in  exterior plastics, but thinning the wall thickness also results in poor  fluidity in the mold, which requires the development of plastics with  better fluidity to meet new requirements. In addition, the price of good plastics will be much higher. Therefore,  for raw material manufacturers, further research is needed on the  formulation of plastics to find a balance between cost and material  properties.
Niu  Yuanhui pointed out that at present, domestic material suppliers are  still mainly based on production, and there is still a certain gap  compared with the mature new material development system of foreign  material manufacturers. This requires a large amount of capital  investment and long-term research of highly sophisticated talents. . At  present, there have been many mature plastic raw material manufacturers  in China, which has greatly promoted the application of plastics in  exterior decoration.
Super weathering and spray-free is the trend of the times
For automotive exterior plastic applications, safety is of course a priority. Under the premise of ensuring safety, environmental protection has become a topic of concern. Nowadays,  some spray-free plastics have gradually entered the application field  of automotive exteriors due to their advantages of reducing pollution  and saving costs.
According  to reports, plastics will pollute the environment during the spraying  process, and the spray-free plastics will be directly colored after the  parts are formed, eliminating the need for spraying, which not only  reduces pollution, but also saves the cost of spraying. In the past two years, it has become a popular material.
However,  Niu Yuanhui pointed out that the spray-free plastic is not perfect. Due  to the loss of the protection of the paint layer, the weather  resistance of the material will be reduced. Only the combination of  spray-free plastic and super weather resistance is the way out. In  the current environment where people are paying more and more attention  to environmental protection, super weather-resistant and spray-free  plastics are bound to be the trend of the times.