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Bruce Benda—Vice president of automotive and transportation at Bayer Material Science
Bruce Benda is the vice president of automotive and transportation for Bayer MaterialScience LLC. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. Benda grew up in the Detroit automotive industry where his father worked for General Motors for more than 30 years. He has worked with Bayer since 1985 and has spent a large portion of that time working in the global automotive industry. He recently returned from the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) Management Briefings where much discussion surrounded President Obama’s announcement of his intention to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to 54.5 mpg by the year 2025.
What is your focus and how does that apply to the composites industry?
We supply chemical building blocks to tier one and tier two suppliers for the automotive industry. We find ourselves between crude oil and automotive. We’ll take materials and turn them into plastics, coatings, adhesive and polyurethane resins which are used in the manufacture of head lamp assemblies, instrument panels, handles and the headliner above head in vehicle, etc. Our global headquarters is in Germany, and we have a strong presence in the European automotive market as well as Asia Pacific and NAFTA.
What do you see driving automotive the industry right now?
Simply put, automotive lightweighting leads to improved fuel economy. I’ve looked at the statistics in automotive for the last couple of years to better understand what’s happening to materials. There is an evolution over the last ten years concerning the weight of the materials. The average weight of car at the end of the 90s was around 4,000 pounds, maybe slightly less. And that stayed relatively constant until 2009. Plastics and composites have grown an average of 3.8 percent over that same period of time.
How does this impact the composites industry?
Composites have been playing an increasingly important role over the last several years. Within our company composites have become more relevant; polycarbonates grew at 5.6 percent per year over the 10 year period ending in 2009; slightly less than 20 pounds per vehicle. Over that same period polyurethane usage grew 1.4 percent per year, comprising approximately 60 pounds per vehicle. Looking forward, the U.S. government is reaching for 54.5 mpg. The challenging situation is that the automotive industry has to increase fuel economy and thus look into a variety of solutions, for example turbo charging an engine to minimize the size and weight without sacrificing performance and efficiencies in the power train. Overall, we need to take weight out of the vehicle. Ford talked about taking 200-700 pounds out of its vehicle over the next 5-8 years. Without being specific, they talked about how lightweighting is a significant factor for the automotive industry in order to reduce fuel consumption and the carbon footprint. The challenge is to make vehicles lightweight while maintaining competitive cost, materials functionality and modular constructions without compromising safety while also allowing design flexibility to meet consumer comfort expectation.
What is the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) Management Briefing?
At CAR meetings, executives come together to talk about a number of things involving the automotive industry; these are mainly high-level talks; we don’t get to the specifics. For example, when Ford mentioned cutting 200-700 pounds, it briefly mentioned how it planned to achieve this goal and materials selection was mentioned generally as an approach to make that happen.
What are lightweighting options?
One way to cut weight is to turbo-charge a 4-cylinder engine instead of integrating a heavier 6-cylinder. It’s smaller, more lightweight and the structure supporting it might be less massive. We think glass replacement is an obvious opportunity area for plastics and composite material. Clear polycarbonate can save up to 50 percent of the mass instead of glass with some sort of thermoset polyurethane surrounding or framing the polycarbonate for a roof module. Using a thermoplastic frame would be a modular concept to replacing a glass centered module, reducing the car’s center of gravity, which can help from a performance stand point as well.
How does the American market compare to the global economy?
China moves quickly. China is emerging as the biggest consumer and producer of vehicles in the world and they have many cities that are becoming mega cities – 22 million people live in Shanghai alone. The Chinese are committed to the use of electric vehicles instead of tinkering with internal combustion. That also means they’re open to looking at technologies for making electric cars efficient. Lightweighting technology companies seem to be more willing to discuss options that are not mainstream to help reach goals of fuel efficiencies.
Europe and America are very good at being methodical in their approach for their technologies. Polycarbonate glazing has penetrated in European markets more than North America. The Asian market is very important for polycarbonates and polyurethane – manufacturing in general. It’s important to have a presence in Asia, which is why Bayer is making new investment there.
What are some key issues you think that keep the industry from growing?
Acceptance of change is still the largest hindrance. When you are competing with materials like steel and glass that have been around since the beginning of the automotive industry, trying to change materials takes time. You have to build up credibility and applications. Secondly, companies want to make sure that the technology you provide is on the road and proven. All of us have to create business cases. If you build it, it will come. Credibility is the only way companies can make a sound business decision. We are willing to make that leap.
Where do you see problems with composites currently?
We, the automotive industry, have to be good at creating value propositions. We’re looking at integration, modularity, removal of substructure and wall thinning to make sure we’re creating a good value proposition. The automotive industry needs evidence in numbers that the composites industry has been successful.
What was the reaction of the industry to the 54.5 mpg initiative?
The automotive industry reacted in general by saying this is a positive development and a significant challenge. Companies are indicating that the new standard will drive innovation in materials and concepts that are already available. There have been challenges over the last couple years, but now that the industry has gotten healthier they are affording themselves the luxury of in-depth analysis for fuel economy. 54.5 mpg is a catalyst for driving innovation in industry.
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