BMW 7 Series 

Hi I'm Florian Schek, I'm BMW group's Head of Lightweight Design and Vehicle Weight Management and I want to show you what we did with the all new 7 series.

We saved up to 290 pounds in weight. That was basically done by three major steps. Having a top of the range, innovative body concept, reducing the weight in the components, and work in all the details. So weight reduction is very much necessary in BMW vehicles because we want to really have very very efficient costs, so weight reduction pays in for increased handling, behavior, increased riding comfort, the roof frame, on the B pillar, and in the rocket panel, so it basically enhances the rigidity and the stiffness of the whole body, and it increases the safety of the passenger compartment.

In addition to the carbon core elements we have in that body, we also increased the number of aluminum elements in the body. For example we have the engine carrier here, which is made from continuous casting process, as well as the front struck domes, also aluminum casting part. Both parts can easily be adjusted in terms of stiffness and rigidity that you need for either crash behavior or the driving dynamics.

In the rear of the car we were also integrating a really large aluminum part, it's the rear carrier. It was made also in the casting process, so the combination of carbon fiber elements together with the aluminum fuelage of high framed steels, together stand for up to 90 pounds of weight reduction for this carbon core body.

In addition to the weight reduction that is coming from the carbon core body, there were another 200 pounds of weight reduction to found in all the other components. We did a new acoustic concept. We were working on every component concept that is new to this vehicle, and in the end we did very much work in the details of the car, so we ended up with the total amount of 290 pounds weight reduction of this car.