Evonik's PMMA-based car screens significantly cuts down race car's weight

01-Jul-09

In a bid to significantly cut down weight, the front and side windows of the British race car, Lotus Exige, were made of PLEXIGLAS®.polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) supplied by Germany's Evonik. The side windows have a composite design made of PLEXIGLAS® with a soft inside layer. As a result, the composite windows weigh only half as much as conventional glass windows, the company claims. In addition, the composite design is primarily characterized by high rigidity and transparency, excellent acoustics, and outstanding UV- and weather-resistance. The company says the material is highly resistant to ageing and much more resistant to stone chipping compared to glass. Together with the Lotus Engineering team in the British town of Hethel, the company developed a special, road-approved Lotus Exige that contains all lightweight design solutions of Evonik and a few additional features. The purpose of the road-approved racing car is to show how race-proven lightweight solutions can find their way into serial applications, and of course, to underscore how attractive the results of losing weight can be. The Evonik Light Weight Design (LWD) Lotus is the result of these efforts and weighs a full 75 kilograms less than the ultra-light serial car, Exige S.