here is question about Carbon Ciber parts how safe are they in the a crash? what kind of testing do they stand up to., and is there any regulation from DOT on them?

I posted this on another fourm site but what is your feel for it?

 

Carbon body panels have absolutely no effect on crash safety. Crash protection is built into the frame/chassis of your vehicle. Even with older cars (think Civics, CRXs, Integras), the chassis is what makes the car strong, not the sheet metal. With modern cars, there are crumple zones made from different kinds of high strength steel and sometimes 'exotic' metals (Audi, for one uses many different steels in the production of their unibody cars). The frame/chassis takes the force of any impact and not the body panels. Every modern vehicle has very thin sheet metal body panels that all but dent if you look at them funny. Those panels pretty much just bend out of the way in an accident and absorb only a very slight amount of energy from the impact.

Something else to think about is OEM parts. If an OEM part somehow decreases the crash worthiness of a vehicle, the part will be changed out during the design phase for a part made from a different material that is not unsafe. With that said, many vehicles come from the factory with aluminum, fiberglass, and some even carbon fiber body panels. In fact, one that comes to mind if a Cadillac STS-V... the raised hood that clears the supercharger is made of fiberglass. Fiberglass = carbon fiber (basically). If the fiberglass hood made the car any less safe in an accident, surely Cadillac would pull the hood from production immediately. Too many lawyers in the world! lol.