Gorilla Glass and Airstream’s Love for Aluminum

NOVI, MI – Corning’s Gorilla Glass can be found in 4.5 billion smartphones and other devices, but it hasn’t cracked the automotive world yet.

Chengchung (Jim) Li’s job is to have the damage-resistant material installed on vehicles of tomorrow in the form of touchscreens that have become a vital interface for drivers.

A few customers have been using Gorilla Glass touchscreens for aftermarket audio systems available in China for the past six months, but New York-based Li, who is Corning’s technical project manager of surfaces, knows the ultimate goal is to have the material used on high-volume vehicle programs, from pickup trucks and SUVs to luxury cars and subcompacts.

He sees significant growth ahead as future vehicles will need more touchscreens and more display area.

“The market will come, but this is the early stage for automotive applications,” Li says after his presentation at the first-ever WardsAuto User Experience Conference here. “We are working with customers on future designs.”

Most displays or touchscreens in production vehicles today are made of plastic or soda-lime glass, but those materials are less durable (as well as less expensive) than Gorilla Glass. Li says plastic screens are prone to scratches from jewelry and keys and do not clean up as well, either.

“Customers are interested in Gorilla Glass because they know it’s break-resistant and damage-resistant. They know we have a better option.”

In emerging markets, Li says automakers are considering a large piece of Gorilla Glass positioned behind the steering wheel, with multiple gauges visible from underneath.

Airstream's McKay Featherstone.

Li’s panel, “Materials That Enable and Enhance the UX,” focuses on the tactile elements of the user experience, from seat sensors capable of encouraging better posture to premium Airstream travel trailers made from aluminum and featuring customized interiors that deliver a first-rate user experience.

Based in Jackson Center, OH, Airstream encourages its employees each year to take one of the shiny, aerodynamic trailers on the road for a camping trip that lets them experience the product as the end customer does.

A core element of that experience is the use of aluminum, both inside and out. “You have to love the material and bring it to life,” says McKay Featherstone, vice president-product development and engineering at Airstream. “It starts with the experience.”

From a design standpoint, Featherstone says Airstream views aluminum as a blank canvas to be painted upon.

“Whether it’s the exterior and its reflective nature, or today for us on the interiors and bringing the aluminum into the interior, this is really where we take that constraint and make it beautiful by focusing on the customer experience.”

Asked by an audience member how Airstream views the emerging era of self-driving vehicles, Featherstone is keeping an open mind.

“Once you’re in a world where you don’t need to use a steering wheel and focus on the road, what do you want to do?” he says.

“For me, it’s not just turning around the seats like in a stagecoach. But if I can promise you that you can travel, bring with you your big-screen TV, your couch, your refrigerator and your bathroom while you’re traveling, that starts to get exciting. Think of the adventures you can have when the vehicle is now traveling at night. So that big trip out to Yosemite becomes a lot more attainable from a time standpoint.”

Asimina Kiourti, assistant professor at Ohio State.

Ohio State University has an ElectroScience Lab experimenting with wireless sensors and electronics that can be woven into fabrics for use in multiple industries, from aerospace and sports to defense and child monitoring.

In automotive, these intelligent fabrics can be used as radio-frequency identification tabs in tires, embroidered antennas, to monitor steering patterns and driver drowsiness and in auto-adjusting seatbelts that also can sense a person’s vital signs, says Asimina Kiourti, assistant professor at OSU.

Researchers at the university were approached by a manufacturer of truck tires interested in embedding them with RFID chips, and there have been talks with other automotive companies as well, she says.

“For us, we want the company to define the application of this technology,” Kiourti says. “We don’t want to say, ‘This application will work great for you.’ We are open to ideas automakers want to implement.”

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