Gordon Murray Design has said it will receive EU funding for a feasibility study that will investigate the economic potential for the mass production of its lightweight automotive seats.
The Productionisation of Advanced Modular Passenger Autonomous Seating (PAMPAS) project is a feasibility study funded through the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
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Gordon Murray Design recently revealed its new seat innovation – the iStream lightweight seat – which incorporates glass or recycled carbon-fibre composite bonded to a tubular frame to achieve a claimed 30% weight saving vs a conventional modern seat.
The company says the building of composite car seats has traditionally been expensive due to the unsuitability of the composite manufacturing process for mass production, but the iStream manufacturing process 'overturns this convention', it says, utilising a composite sandwich panel structure and metallic frame combination, which costs no more than a conventional car seat.
To ensure the seating system can enter into series production as a commercially viable proposition, major deliverables from the PAMPAS project will be to undertake a study to establish market trends and growth expectations of seating systems within the automotive industry and to investigate and assess manufacturing business model options.
Gordon Murray Design says the advantages of the iStream lightweight seat include:
- 30% weight saving vs conventional modern seat.
- iStream lightweight composite structure (glass or carbon).
- Full four-way adjustment and fold-flat mode.
ECE R17 Luggage retention.
Professor Gordon Murray, Chairman of Gordon Murray Design said: "Gordon Murray Design is pleased to announce the Productionisation of Advanced Modular Passenger Autonomous Seating (PAMPAS) project as an important further development of the revolutionary iStream manufacturing technology and is another example of a new innovation that can be implemented in a cost-effective and robust manner, appropriate for mass production".
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 827005.
