Rubber is used for much more than just the tires of modern cars. A German mid-size luxury car built in 2009 weighing around 1 400 kg contains 62 kg of elastomers. Even though present-day cars contain much less elastomer than thermoplastic and thermosetting plastics (in this case 161 kg and 34 kg respectively), technical rubber components can, unlike these polymer materials, seldom be substituted by other products. Some polyetheresters and polyurethanes have replaced a proportion of polar synthetic rubbers; apolar synthetic rubbers can sometimes be replaced by TPO and TPV (thermoplastic polyolefins or PP-EPDM blends). But most important elastomer functions cannot reliably be performed by other materials - including mounting, damping (except for noise emissions), safe media conveyance and effective sealing.
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