Our customers, OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, are under immense financial pressure to reduce CO2 emissions and meet EU legislated targets. In the EU, OEMs face financial penalties for emissions beyond these targets.
Cost reduction is a major challenge for seat manufacturers, forcing companies to experiment with new and innovative designs, materials and manufacturing processes that maintain performance and comfort whilst reducing costs.
Since the introduction of CO2 targets for the automotive industry and resulting penalties, the use of lightweight materials now delivers a monetary benefit, which justifies an increased use of lightweight materials for the future. However, lightweighting poses a significant challenge, with an industry target of €17 additional cost for every kg weight saved .
One way of cutting vehicle emissions is to reduce the weight of a vehicle’s components. Vehicle seats are generally heavy and/or expensive, not to mention complex to manufacture. However, reducing weight tends to come at a cost. Our product overcomes all of these issues
The iStream® manufacturing technology is a radical rethink on the conventional automotive manufacturing process and the way in which vehicle systems are designed, developed and produced. This technology is transferable to other areas of the vehicle and seating systems has proven to be an excellent example of how a simple tubular frame coupled with bonded composite sandwich panels can provide a strong and lightweight structure capable of satisfying all relevant ECE requirements.
See Final Report attached.
