Abstract: Light-weighted materials and carbon fiber composites dominate the developing trends of automobile materials. They can be used in the body, chassis, drive shaft, motor case, brake pad and some parts of automobile. To increase the use of carbon fiber in medium-grade cars, recently the research of global carbon fiber and carbon fiber reinforced polymer/plastics (CFRP) industry has been focusing on increasing the production efficiency and reducing production costs of carbon fiber, improving CFRP molding technology, adopting additives that are cheaper but capable of improving the overall performance of CFRP, developing the technologies for recovering carbon fiber from waste CFRP and developing the technologies for bonding CFRP with metals and related adhesives. The paper investigates and analyzes the above-mentioned points and forecasts the future development of new automobile materials both at home and abroad.

Key words: automobile; light-weighting; energy-saving; environment-friendly; carbon fiber reinforced resin