1> Carbon fiber is generally stronger, and lighter than traditional materials. With internal combustion engines reaching peak efficiencies, with no real new innovations, engineers turn to reducing the weight of the car to help increase fuel efficiency.
2>Carbon fiber is roughly 10 times stronger than steel and 8 times as strong as aluminum.
3>The largest benefit to using carbon fiber in the automotive industry is the the added strength as well as the stiffness.
4>Carbon fiber is generally more harmful to the environment as it uses toxic epoxies and resins to bond together
5>I believe carbon fiber will find widespread use. AS innovations with the internal combustion engine grind to a fault, engineers will look to other methods to increase fuel efficiency. I.e. Reducing weight
6>Perhaps the biggest drawback to carbon fiber’s use is cost, and time unlike steel carbon fiber cannot be reused as easily as steel and carbon fiber usually requires more skilled workers as opposed to autonomy.
7>Again, the strength and stiffness are the largest benefits to using carbon fiber. One could make a case that it looks nicer as well
8> carbon fiber is much more expensive than steel to manufacture, and further down the supply chain, it takes skilled workers and less automation to use, in addition, carbon fiber is harder to scale in a automotive manufacturing setting.
9>While there are materials that are stronger, such as graphene and carbon nanotube technology, these materials have yet to make it out of a lab setting.
10>Again, carbon fiber is going to be harder to work with just because it requires a skilled worker, and at this point in time isn’t able to be done by robots.