Cooper Standard fluid management tube

As a supplier of fluid systems and pipes for internal combustion engines and hydraulic components, as well as door and window seals, Cooper Standard Automotive has been booming for decades.

But the company is facing two challenges: automakers are accelerating their entry into battery-powered electric vehicles and wire-control technology, and their fluid requirements are different from the past. At the same time, these manufacturers are also pushing the supply chain to reduce their carbon footprint.

Chris Couch, the manufacturer's chief technology officer in Northville, Michigan, said that for Cooper Standard, the way forward is to innovate with new materials that perform better than traditional rubber. The company has developed a proprietary elastomer called Fortrex, which is said to be 30% lighter than traditional sealing and piping materials.

Cooper Standard is also working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to further use recycled plastic materials to manufacture Fortrex, including discarded water bottles, washing powder containers and bags.

"If we successfully scale it up, we will be able to provide pure post-consumer waste to our sealing business and our fluid applications," Couch told Automotive News. "It is suitable for the environment where we currently need high temperature and high pressure rubber."

Couch believes that Fortrex will enable Cooper Standard to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of its products by 53% compared to rubber.

"There is a huge push for more sustainable materials," he said. "I can tell you that in the field of fluid products in the past, you did not have the best materials. Rubber hoses are not easy to recycle. This is the nature of vulcanized rubber-you can grind it and recycle it and use it on the football field. But only so much.

"Therefore, we are trying to be very innovative in the material field to use compounds from the most sustainable sources we can find."

The risk of developing new material solutions is high. Last year, Cooper Standard was the 76th largest component supplier in the world, with sales to automakers of US$2.38 billion, and participated in the production of the world's 16 best-selling electric vehicles.

Couch said that although the fluid requirements of electric vehicles will be different from those of internal combustion engine vehicles, for fluid line manufacturers, electric vehicles are far from a deal killer. "From what we have seen so far, there is more fluid flowing through the EV framework than in ICE vehicles," he said. "There is indeed no fuel, so this line has disappeared. But a lot of thermal management must be done on the battery pack, electric motors and power electronics, as well as the computer on the self-driving car. All these lines no longer run under the hood in the front -They are under or behind the vehicle. So there are more meters of pipes moving in the structure."

Couch believes that in the next few years, fluid handling products with lighter weight and more sustainable designs will have a competitive advantage in this field.

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