Interview with Scott Fallon, General Manager, Automotive, SABIC’s Innovative Plastics business

Your product portfolio includes thermoplastic resins, coatings, specialty compounds, film, and sheet. How many of these products find their way into vehicles and within vehicles, where are these parts generally used?
We manufacture and compound a wide range of materials for the automotive industry. The good thing is that our problem-solving materials are versatile; they can be used in practically every application space that we serve today, including: chassis, electrical and electronics, exteriors, interiors, lighting, powertrain and fuel systems. So, our materials go into a wide variety of parts that you can see and some that you can’t: dashboards or instrument panels, door modules, tailgates, front headlights, body panels like fenders, fuel doors, front grilles, front and rear bumpers, engine components, wiring, and so much more. This is one of the advantages of working with a materials supplier like SABIC – we have one of the broadest range of thermoplastics materials, which can be used widely across the entire vehicle, and these problem-solving materials are complemented by the engineering design competence of our global team of automotive specialists.

SABIC has worked with some automotive brands like Volkswagen, Land Rover, Fiat, Mitsubishi and Hyundai to help develop new products. Do you continue working with them or does this list keep changing as per the requirement from the OEMs? Can you also tell us something about the products you have developed with some of the players?

There are a couple of other interesting parts to this fender story with Mahindra & Mahindra. Because plastic can be molded into shapes that aren’t possible with steel, the OEM had the freedom to design aggressively flared fenders with accentuated curves and bold lines to create the muscular cheetah-like look that it wanted for the XUV500. Also, this fender is much more durable and stands up better against minor accidents because of its impact strength, its ability to flex as well as the broad environmental resistance it offers. We think this is a good example, right here in India, of what SABIC thermoplastics and our engineering design competence can do to support automakers’ efforts to continually enhance their products, whether it’s improving fuel economy and lowering emissions through weight out, creating cutting-edge styling or enhancing durability.

Innovative Plastics makes the critical plastic parts for vehicles. Obviously these are no ordinary plastics. Can these plastics withstand high temperatures and a high degree of wear and tear?

First, to clarify, SABIC does not make plastic automotive parts. Rather, we make the plastic resins that molders use to make those parts. With that said, we are much more than a producer of plastics. We are a solutions provides that collaborates with automakers and tier suppliers in the earliest stages of the part design process to help them maximize their desired results, whether it’s light-weighting taking the most weight possible out of a part, significantly enhancing durability, reducing part and manufacturing complexity or some other objective. The reason we can contribute at those early stages is that we can draw from the engineering design expertise of our teams across the world, including our team in India and Asia Pacific, which spans practically every major application space across the vehicle.
On plastics that can take the heat and offer a high degree of wear and tear, we offer a number of options. One example is ULTEM resin, a polyetherimide (PEI) material with outstanding high temperature resistance, high strength and stiffness and broad chemical resistance. Various grades of this resin are used today in automotive lighting applications, in which long-term heat resistance is important.

A good example of ULTEM resin in action in automotive lighting is use of the material in a fog lamp developed by automotive lighting supplier Hella Slovenia and Volkswagen for the Golf 7 and other select Volkswagen Group models.  The design engineers needed a material that could withstand high temperatures in a compact space. A material in our portfolio, ULTEM AUT210 resin, which can withstand haze onset temperatures of up to 210^oC, answered the call and also allowed Volkswagen to achieve the desired aesthetics and ensure a lightweight design. This is a good example of our ability to help part designers push the boundaries of what is possible.

ULTEM resin is not only used in lighting, but also in powertrain parts like transmission components, ignition components, sensors and more. Thermoplastic solutions like ULTEM resin have proven effective at withstanding high temperatures of harsh engine environments, allowing automakers to take weight out without compromising performance.
A second example of a rugged material that we offer is NORYL™ resin, a modified polyphenylene ether (mPPE) material. This is a very lightweight engineering thermoplastic resin from SABIC that can help ensure the long-term durability of battery components. A number of vehicles on the road today use NORYL resin in battery parts, including Nissan’s all-electric LEAF. Nissan uses the material for key components of its Lithium-Ion battery pack system to save up to 20 percent in weight for those parts, but also to achieve long-term dimensional stability and enhanced flame retardancy. Other vehicles on the road today that use NORYL resin include the Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid and the Ford Focus Electric.

With emphasis on better fuel efficiency and stringent environment norms, do you see lightweight automotive parts, especially the ones made by you, replacing the traditional metal parts, yet meeting the highest levels of safety, etc.?
We will continue to see metal and heavier materials replaced as the global automotive industry moves to lighten vehicles in response to demanding fuel economy and emission standards. Today, our thermoplastic materials are used on more and more applications that used to be made out of steel. Our materials not only help take out weight, but can also provide our customers with ways to enhance safety.
As an example, today, SABIC thermoplastics are used on front and rear energy absorbers, which improve the crashworthiness of a vehicle in the event of a collision. Ford uses XENOY resin from SABIC to construct a single-piece front bumper energy absorber for its 2014MY Fusion and Mondeo platform. With its stiffness, XENOY resin provides excellent energy absorption upon impact and can retain its structural integrity across a wide range of temperatures. The part is 40 percent lighter and 10 percent less costly than a comparable part made out of steel. The part, which was recognized by the Society of Plastics Engineers as one of 2013’s most innovative automotive plastic applications, is also designed to minimize the severity of injuries to pedestrians in the event of a collision.
In addition to replacing metal, another big opportunity is available to OEMs – replacing glass in vehicle windows with polycarbonate (PC). Replacing conventional glass solutions with plastic glazing can take out up to 50 percent in weight, depending on the design and complexity of a window part. Rear quarter windows can be a good place for automakers to start, and many are in production today, including those on the Citroën DS5 and the Fiat 500L. Each of these windows use LEXAN™ resin, a PC material from SABIC.
PC glazing is also a great candidate for applying to front quarter windows, roofs and spoilers. One window application that holds tremendous potential is the rear windshield or backlite. This is an application where automakers can strive to take advantage of all the benefits made possible by PC glazing. One of those benefits includes greater design freedom for the OEM to enhance the styling and aerodynamics of the vehicle and to take advantage of expanded possibilities for integrated other parts, such as the fixing for rear lighting, antennas and cameras on a rear windshield, for example.
We are seeing great interest from OEMs in exploring the use of PC glazing on various window applications, including rear windows.
Part of this interest, though certainly not all, has come from the all-plastic tailgate concept that we have shared with the industry. This proposed tailgate design can save up to 30 percent in weight compared to tailgates made out of conventional materials like steel and glass. The tailgate concepts uses various thermoplastic materials from SABIC and is truly all-plastic with the rear window molded out of LEXAN resin. SABIC’s EXATEC™ plasma coating is used on the rear window to provide glass-like scratch and UV resistance and to enable automakers to meet homologation requirements for driver visibility.

In India, various industries consume your products… aerospace, automobiles, healthcare, fertilizers, etc. Does it mean your products cater to a wide variety of applications?
Yes. Our portfolio of products and technologies is diverse and also versatile in that it can be applied to a wide variety of applications within one industry and also across multiple industries. Today, in addition to serving automotive customers in India, we are working on solutions for customers in industries like construction, consumer electronics and mass transportation.