For the first time, a plastic frunk doubles as a chassis component thanks to Tepex^® reinforcement

Düsseldorf, September 22^nd, 2026 – A breakthrough in structural lightweight design is making its debut in a fully electric four-door high-performance sports car from a leading German premium automaker: the first plastic frunk that doubles as both storage space and a highly robust structural chassis component. The frunk is manufactured by Röchling Automotive SE in Worms, Germany, and Envalior will showcase it at Fakuma 2026.

The polypropylene frunk features Tepex^® organosheet-reinforcements from Envalior in its rear wall and the bolted floor sections. A key characteristic of this thermoplastic composite material is that it contains fabrics with multiaxially oriented continuous glass fibers. This gives the structural part the strength required to withstand the high loads encountered in extreme driving scenarios, such as sudden lane changes, crosswinds, or racetrack use. In this design, the frunk connects a strut brace to the front-axle carrier and stiffens the front axle by acting as a vertical shear panel. As a result, the lightweight component enhances road contact and driving stability.

Manufactured in a single process step

“Frunk” is a coined term derived from front and trunk, the American word for the luggage compartment. In electric vehicles, the component is in the front end, where the engine sits in combustion-engine cars, and serves as storage space for items such as charging cables or tools.

The high-performance sports car's frunk is approximately 1,100 mm long, 450 mm wide, and 370 mm high. Röchling developed an efficient hybrid-molding process for its production. The process combines thermoforming of the Tepex^® organosheet with injection molding in a single mold, enabling the production of a fully finished, rework-free component in a single manufacturing step.

“Beyond the frunk’s design as a highly load-bearing chassis component, the manufacturing process we developed represents another key highlight of the application. Achieving uniform mold filling despite the complex geometry – while simultaneously minimizing weld lines to ensure the part’s high mechanical performance – was particularly challenging,” says Matthias Schütte, Global Product Manager for Structural Lightweight Design at Röchling Automotive.

Fiber orientation precisely tailored to withstand tensile, bending, and shear loads

The frunk is reinforced with a multilayer Tepex^® organosheet featuring continuous fibers oriented at 0°/90° in the outer layers and +45°/-45° in the inner layers. This multiaxial laminate architecture is precisely tuned to the component’s direction-dependent mix of tensile, bending, and shear loads. The 0°/90° fibers primarily improve crash performance, while the ±45° fibers ensure optimal vehicle dynamics under extreme lateral loading. During highly dynamic driving maneuvers, off-road operation, or high-speed cornering, lateral forces can twist the front body structure – a deformation prevented by the frunk’s high torsional stiffness. Bolted to the strut brace at the upper flange and to the front-axle carrier at the bottom, the frunk acts as a vertical shear panel.

A unique competitive edge through multiaxially reinforced organosheets

“As a producer of organosheets, we have unique expertise. We can produce customized multilayer organosheets in high-volume production with continuous fibers oriented not only at 0° and 90°, but at virtually any angle required. This allowed us to engineer a customized organosheet for the frunk whose fiber orientations follow the exact load paths within the component, making it precisely adapted to the load-specific requirements,” says Dr. Klaus Vonberg, Sales & Project Manager Global Sales Tepex^® at Envalior.

A key advantage of Envalior’s multiaxially reinforced organosheets is their ability to withstand high forming degrees. The fabric layers are resistant to fiber shifting and remain intact even at component corners, ensuring a highly reproducible forming process and consistently high part quality.

Hybrid molding paves the way for frunks with highly complex inner architectures

According to Vonberg, Tepex^® will make it possible to manufacture future frunks with significantly greater functionality and more sophisticated geometries, while at the same time fulfilling structural tasks within the vehicle body. This is because the hybrid-molding process enables cost-efficient, high-volume integration of additional features directly into the component.

“In the future, it may be possible to integrate features such as cool boxes, drawers, cargo nets, or holders for the charging cable directly into these frunks,” Vonberg notes.

Detailed information on Envalior's materials can be found in Envalior's MaterialAdvisor, which provides digital tools and services that customers can use to find, select, and evaluate materials.

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