Continuing just-auto’s series of interviews with global players in the occupant restraints market, Matthew Beecham talked with Claus Rudolf, Vice President of Global Engineering at Takata Corp. Headquartered Tokyo, Japan, Takata’s products are primarily sold in Japan, the Americas, Europe and Asia.
How is the market for airbags integrated into seatbelts shaping-up?
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Takata’s Airbelt – equipped on the 2011 luxury sports car Lexus LFA – was the first inflatable seatbelt to reach the market. Soon thereafter, airbags integrated into seatbelts were included as an option on the 2011 Ford Explorer, and the new 2014 Mercedes S-class will be equipped with its Belt Bag as standard equipment. As shown by the Explorer and the S-Class, we are finding that airbags integrated into seatbelts are gaining traction in the second/rear seating positions. Occupants in these seating positions are ideal candidates for such technology, considering packaging constraints preclude the use of traditional airbags, and the distributed restraint loading associated with the inflatable seatbelt helps to further minimise head, neck, and chest injuries for a range of vulnerable occupants typically seated in the rear, from young children to the elderly.
Still, while the market for airbags integrated into seatbelts is growing, the rate of market growth and penetration will be dictated by the associated regulatory and consumer information environment. Currently, no such mandates exist but we see an increased focus on rear occupant safety, as shown by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s research programs and their stated consideration for the next generation US NCAP, as well as the higher threshold for rear occupant protection that will be implemented into 2015 EuroNCAP.
There has been some concern over the years about placing rear-facing child seats in front of an airbag. But is there any risk associated with rear side airbags?
Depending on national laws, children shall be seated in an appropriate Child Restraint System (CRS) up to a height of 130-150 cm. Modern CRS are designed with rigid structures combined with energy-absorbing materials to surround and protect a child’s body in front, side and rear crashes. Multiple studies on side airbag interaction with the CRS and child dummies do not highlight major potential injury risks. However, it is known that some bulky CRS may interact unfavourably with the deployment of side airbags.
We hear a lot about the term ‘integrated safety’ and understand it to refer to how active safety and passive safety are seen as less and less distinct from one another. Is that correct and what does it mean for Takata? Does this ‘integration’ mean more, say, merging airbag electronics with electronic control systems?
The areas of active and passive Safety continue to evolve and cover a wider range of possibilities. Where active and passive safety meet, new functionalities arise which we call ‘Integrated Safety’. Integrated Safety utilizes advanced sensing to obtain information inside of the vehicle, including the state of the driver, and information outside of the vehicle, including the imminent crash scenario, to specifically adapt the restraint system to provide a tailored, optimal level of crash protection. The concept of Integrated Safety offers endless possibilities, the main opportunity being that we can shift the paradigm of occupant safety from ‘one size fits all’ to ‘optimal protection for all’.
Integrated Safety systems will not necessarily merge the airbag electronics with the electronic control systems in the vehicle to eliminate redundant components. Rather, with Integrated Safety systems, the electronic control unit will now take the internal and external intelligence gathered by the advanced electronic sensors, process this information through advanced algorithms and direct the activation of the advanced restraint components in a much more sophisticated way compared to traditional systems.
The Euro NCAP ratings in 2015 bring with it a focus on rear seat safety. Technology-wise, could you tell us how Takata has responded to this?
Consistent with Takata’s vision of ‘zero victims in traffic accident’, Takata has been researching and developing systems for rear occupant safety for some time. For example, Takata has conducted several research studies to look at rear occupant protection for both front and side impact, and made public this research at conferences and through technical papers, most recently at ESV 2013.
Technology-wise, at a minimum we envision the seatbelt systems evolving from basic three-point locking retractors to more sophisticated systems, including belt pretensioners and belt force limiters, similar to what’s provided for front seat occupants. Furthermore, the concept of Integrated Safety which offers significant promise to front occupants could be applied to the rear seat as well to provide the next level of occupant protection. For example, coupling pre-crash sensing systems with advanced restraints like ‘pre’-pretensioning seatbelt systems with adaptive belt force limiters appear very beneficial. Still, providing adequate head and neck protection with belt-only systems is a challenge, and this is where the Takata Airbelt provides another level of rear occupant protection. Additionally, Takata is currently researching other novel inflatable restraint concepts to address this challenge.
To what extent are passive safety features being fitted to electric vehicles?
When looking at traditional gas-powered and electric vehicles, the crash safety requirements and the basic fundamentals of occupant restraint do not change, and therefore, the passive safety system on an electric vehicle looks very much like the passive safety system for a gas-powered vehicle. However, due to their unique power generation and delivery systems, electric vehicles do offer the potential for more benign crash pulses and lesser occupant compartment intrusions during a crash, which could mitigate the complexity of the passive safety system. But the fundamental passive safety elements remain the same. Of note is that Takata supplied the full passive safety system for the 2012 Tesla Model S, which achieved a 5-star rating in US-NCAP testing and achieved the lowest injury risk probability score of any vehicle tested to date by NHTSA
In terms of occupant restraint systems, what will tomorrow’s car feature?
The remainder of this interview is available on just-auto’s QUBE research service
