Porsche’s Braided Carbon Fiber Wheels Are Engineering Perfection
Porsche has raised the bar again by becoming the world’s first vehicle manufacturer to offer braided carbon fiber wheels.
Made especially for the 911 Turbo S Exclusive Series, Porsche’s braided carbon fiber wheels are an exercise in functional beauty. Porsche say they are 20% lighter than normal alloy wheels, and a large reduction in unsprung weight. They also say they are 20% stronger than conventional alloys. In Porsche speak, that makes them “perfectly optimized” for absorbing longitudinal and lateral forces.
Of course, when engineering goes about losing weight and increasing strength dramatically, the price rises exponentially. In this case, your braided carbon fiber wheels will cost a crisp German price of EUR 15,232. At the time of writing, that’s a cool $17,005 the U.S.
The manufacturing process is complex and involves the cutting and assembly of over 200 individual components. Each wheel contains a staggering 18 kilometers (11 miles) of braided carbon fiber, and to braid it Porsche uses the worlds largest carbon fiber braiding machine. The machine itself has a diameter of approximately nine meters.
The wheel is assembled then impregnated with resin before being pre-hardened at high pressures and temperatures. A long cooling process completes the wheel, leaving it ready for the lacquer finish.
In making their braided carbon fiber wheels, Porsche claim to be the first in the automotive mass production industry using this complex and intensive process. They say pre-impregnated carbon-fiber fabric has “key advantages over the more conventional method of manufacturing” by making the material structure of the carbon denser and more compact. As an added benefit, this process also produces less waste.
A 911 Turbo S Exclusive Series already starts at just over a quarter of a million dollars. If that’s not out of your price range, an extra $17,000 probably isn’t going to be a big stretch. Hopefully, most people buying them will add the option, and sooner or later the cost will start to come down and become an option on more common models.
