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“Module” is a recent trend in Automotive Industry and many kinds of module products were exhibited at the '98 SAE International Congress & Exposition. Returnless fuel pump module is being developed to enable the vehicle to meet lower emissions requirements. Returnless fuel pump module integrates Fuel pump, Fuel filter and Pressure regulator. One characteristic of this module is to make the fuel filter of plastic and to hold it by a plastic bracket for weight reduction. Also, a returnless fuel delivery system uses a plastic fuel tube in place of a rubber hose. Here, design consideration of static electricity was needed. In general, the charged object is grounded. However, we have derived the unique idea to decrease the static electricity of the fuel filter with a non-conductive plastic case and plastic tube without taking the static charge to ground by reducing the generating charge.

Recently, in the automobile industry, developing a plastic material type distinction system has been highly demanded for plastic recycling. We have developed a handy plastic distinction device which distinguishes between polypropylene (PP) and polyurethane (PU) and also distinguishes between 3 types of plastic wheel caps according to the electrostatic capacity and the light reflection pattern of the plastic. The device is operated by a dry battery (9V), so that it can be easily placed in the recovery field of waste automobile plastic parts.

In the field of automobile disk wheels, demands for aluminum wheels have been increasing for the reason of ride comfort and better appearance. And over 90 percent of luxurious passenger cars are equipped with aluminum wheels. This trend is spurred also by the demand for higher fuel efficiency for the cause of environmental protection, which calls for weight reduction of automobiles. This paper reports our research on manufacturing light-weight, high-quality aluminum cast wheels; covering the entire process from basic design to casting, and placing emphasis on the following three points. 1) Determination of optimum wheel configuration through computer simulation 2) Selection of optimum material composition 3) Optimization of the thin plate casting conditions Combination of the above technologies developed for the purpose of weight reduction resulted in the weight reduction of approximately 20% over the conventional aluminum wheels.