SABIC Innovative Plastics Offers Customers New Insight into the Latest Automotive Design Trends

BERGEN OP ZOOM, The Netherlands – April 10, 2008 – As a key material supplier for the automotive industry, SABIC Innovative Plastics works side-by-side with customers to help them deliver business success. One important aspect of this relationship is the annual Auto Trend Watch Program, through which SABIC Innovative Plastics regularly shares its strong market insights, research, and expertise in automotive design trends with customers. Current trends include double-curved glazing with extended functionality, white and deep gloss black exterior applications, and added functionality in wraparound-style exterior body panels.

The company’s automotive design team delivers presentations to small groups of customers that cover the latest design trends and how new material technologies can enable them. Based on input from many sources – including live research on location at key motor shows such as Geneva, Tokyo and Detroit; hands-on design experience; dialogue with OEMs and designers; and continuous monitoring of conferences, literature, and the media – SABIC Innovative Plastics experts offer a unique viewpoint on tomorrow’s vehicle designs.

“We offer customers a different perspective on the auto market and its future designs, and provide a forum for thought-provoking discussions on these trends,” said Geert Jan Schellekens, principal automotive designer for SABIC Innovative Plastics. “We rely on our own knowledge, experience, and special ‘antennae’ for design trends that we’ve developed over the years. Our broad and deep experience in automotive styling and engineering, combined with our knowledge on plastics-specific design issues, makes our reports unique and valuable to customers.”

SABIC Innovative Plastics Tracks Major Auto Design Trends

Double-curved glazing is a key automotive design focus. As one of the last traditional material strongholds, glass is being replaced by thermoplastics such as Lexan GLX* polycarbonate resin. Lexan GLX resin not only offers substantial weight reduction for high-mounted glazed areas such as panoramic roofs, but also facilitates three-dimensional design. This approach can enhance aesthetics and allow integration of functionality within the glazing component. Although double-curved glazing has been used in some production cars since the late 90s, it has remained a niche application. Now there is a great variety of interpretations of this enabling technology in stunning concepts such as the Hyundai QarmaQ and Chevrolet Volt. Applications for double-curved glazing include integrated spoilers and lighting functionality in a tailgate, and “double bubble” styling shapes in the panoramic roof of a sports car.

Another important design area is the merger of taillights and tailgate glazing. A number of recently launched production and concept cars feature taillights that are directly adjacent to glazing applications. Although this glazing is currently made with traditional glass, and is therefore virtually flat while the taillight units are dramatically sculpted, the next development step is easy to imagine. With polycarbonate glazing, both applications could either be integrated in a single, complex shape, or the glazing application could follow the curvature of the tailgate.

Today a number of production cars feature air outlets in the front fenders, typically between the front wheel arch and the door. Where some of the basic outlet shapes would be hard to achieve in metal, particularly aluminum, the fine integrated detail of ribs or lamellae would be impossible in any metal or even thermoset resins. Thermoplastic fenders offer the design freedom needed for these complex shapes. Alternatively, now that headlamp units have become true engineering thermoplastic assemblies (glass lenses, thermoset housings and aluminum reflectors and bezels have been replaced with plastics), these complex components may be reconfigured to include the air intake function.

Finally, alongside traditional materials and colors, typically brown or tan, SABIC Innovative Plastics sees a keen use of glossy, strongly contrasting blacks and whites in concept car interiors. Anticipating such trends, the company has developed a wide range of black and white Visualfx* resins and high-gloss, anti-static polycarbonates.

A Combination of Freedom and Function with Thermoplastics

Schellekens added, “The challenges today's designers are facing include cost pressure, weight reduction, environmentally responsible design and, of course, styling/engineering innovation. Thermoplastics offer a combination of formal freedom and function integration in the broadest sense. If executed well, the consolidation of several components into one will lead to weight savings, as well as assembly cost reduction. With the right materials we can also imagine replacing painting operations with in-molded colors and effects or in-mold decoration technology, offering ecologically sensible alternatives.”

To further assist automotive designers, SABIC Innovative Plastics operates Centers of Excellence around the globe where application development specialists focus on key technologies, including automotive-specific ones. The Glazing Center of Excellence in the Netherlands is one of these locations.

For additional information on SABIC Innovative Plastics please visit the company’s website at www.sabic-ip.com.

Reader enquiries