A review on the Uses of Natural Fibers in Automotive Industry

Nowadays, automotive industry is facing company policies and environmental pressures to reduce increasing fuel cost and CO2 emission with each passing day. These pressures bring into prominence to use composite materials instead of steel and aluminum etc. The unique material which meets these demands and shapes for future cars is agreed as plastic. The average plastic usage in a car is about 105 kg in the world while 120 kg in the developed countries, which means about 10-12% of total weight of the car. The dependence on petroleum-based fuel also decreases with increasing the use of engineering and commercial plastics. This situation reduces the fuel consumption of 750 liters of an average car having a 150,000 kilometers life when all other factors are equal. Based on this calculation, this reduction in the fuel consumption decreases 12 million tons of petroleum consumption and 30 million tons of CO2 emissions per year in Western Europe. According to the estimates of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), it is obtained about 6-8 % of fuel saving in fuel consumption with decreasing 10% of a car weight. In recent years, because of properties such as low cost, low density, high specific resistance and the modulus of elasticity, easily surface modification, easily available, renewable and biodegradable, the utilization of natural fibers as reinforcing materials instead of glass fibers and carbon fibers in the manufacturing of plastic based composite materials is becoming increasingly popular. In this paper, natural fibers are scrutinised with respect to appropriateness of the automotive industry and their applications.