Adient says the marriage of increasing use of shared vehicles with new technology such as phone apps will fuel demand for its technology.
The advent of shared vehicles in particular may trigger a need for customisation of individual needs as multiple users use the same car at different parts of the day.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
“We will be faced very soon with three different types of vehicles: shared, autonomous and traditional,” said Adient director of Technology Centre, Slovakia and Central Engineering, Frank Toenniges at the recent CEE European Automotive Forum in Prague.
“This has implications for automotive interiors and seating. You will have a smart phone app soon so you can adjust your seat before you even enter the car. When the autonomous car will arrive in front of you, the seat is already adjusted. Of course to have Recaro as part of our Group, we have that know-now in the Adient Group, that gives us a big advantage when it comes to slim and light-weight solutions. That is what we transfer to autonomous applications.
“You can open the door and the seat greets you for ingress. People are expecting their vehicle interior to be their home and leisure time. They [also] want to use it for office work and relaxing. We define five user modes: Family, communication, cargo, baby and lounge. It is the demonstrator we showed at IAA.”
In terms of autonomous driving, connectivity, and individualisation, Recaro’s Performance Seat Platform (RPSP) offers various functions such as health monitoring, driver conditioning, automated climatisation, drive mode seat adjustment, automated ingress/egress assistance or an electrical swivel function as an add-on.
It meets higher safety standards and provides more functionality at the same weight, compared to former Recaro seat generations.
Additionally, with its low block height and an H-point of 155mm it leaves more room for battery packaging in the floor of electric vehicles.
