Carbon fiber’s pricing climbs

Carbon fiber is usually used to build supercars that need to lower the weight to have better performance. It is usually a reach man’s material. But now we have very bad news from them: the price for this high-tech material is getting bigger: $20 a pound compared with as little as $5 a pound three or four years ago.

Carbon fiber supplier Zoltek has tripled capacity over the past year to service the growing market. "We’ve been able to raise prices significantly in a two-year time frame," CFO Kevin Schott says.

Saleen says the costs of the carbon fiber that it uses in the body of its $580,000 S7 supercar have more than doubled over the past year. It raised the 2007 price by $25,000 because of it.