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Corning Brings Gorilla Glass To The Automotive Industry (digitaltrends.com)
At CES 2017, Corning has unveiled a concept car covered in Gorilla Glass. The car is augmented with the same Gorilla Glass that has protected smartphones for years, making the vehicle significantly more durable than a car wearing normal glass. Digital Trends reports: Corning's concept features hybrid Gorilla Glass on the windshield, sunroof, rear window, side windows, and the dashboard, which adds up to noticeable weight savings all around. Corning says Gorilla Glass is 30 percent lighter than the soda lime glass featured on most production vehicles, which not only improves fuel economy, it moves the center of gravity lower in the car to improve handling. In addition to the physical advantages, Gorilla Glass is also clearer than normal glass, which allows for more vibrant head-up displays, connected surfaces, and entire dashboards that function as touchscreens. That's not all though, because on the rear window, Corning slipped an electronically controlled opacity film between the layers of glass. With the push of a button, the window went from crystal clear to a dark tint. That'll surely come in hand if you feel the sudden need for privacy. "By bringing Corning Gorilla Glass to the automotive industry, Corning is delivering lighter, tougher, and more optically advantaged solutions, enabling improved fuel efficiency, and a safer, more enhanced user experience for both drivers and passengers," said Marty Curran, executive vice president at Corning. "Corning's leading position in mobile device cover glass has provided an excellent launch pad for glass solutions enabling smartphone like connectivity in cars. We are excited to be demonstrating all of these new technologies and opportunities in a custom-built connected car, shown for the first time at CES."
Seriously, though, car windscreens are highly regulated in the US for safety reasons. Nearly all alternatives to the present windscreen glasses are banned in the US from what I understand (they certainly ban polycarbonate). Maybe Dow-Corning can get them to change this a bit to allow testing of some good alternatives.
if a GG windshield means fewer "sand pits" (which I find annoying when driving into the sun) over the years, I'm in.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The existing windscreens are a "sandwich" of glass and a soft plastic that keeps the glass in place when it shatters. A gorilla glass alternative would be replacing the glass layers but not the entire thing.
Also when polycarbonate breaks it can have sharp edges so 100% polycarbonate in a windscreen is almost as bad an idea as 100% glass.
Don't believe the hype, Gorilla Glass shatters like anything else. And a windscreen is a hard piece of glass to break, or it wouldn't be any use whatsoever. Stones flying at your face at 120+mph combined barely chip normal windscreen glass. You aren't going to punch your way out of the front screen, even if you're Arnie. Maybe the side windows, if you have the right tool and arm-swing enough to use it.
The reality, as always, is that the chances of you being in a situation where you need to break the glass are VASTLY outweighed by the stuff that the glass being tough saves you from.
Everybody might have their plan to cut seatbelts and smash glass after waiting for water pressure to equalise (RUBBISH! DON'T WAIT FOR IT TO SINK AT ALL!) to escape after driving off a bridge into a river, but it's a vanishingly rare scenario and most people in it won't be able to, or would even know, what to do anyway. For a start, your airbag will probably knock you unconscious before anything else.
All Gorilla Glass does, though, it let you lose weight and retain the same strength. It still has to shatter, not splinter, and withstand the same design forces and no more. It just means it can be thinner/lighter and do the same job.
A quick google will show dozens of videos of people trying to break glass out of car windows using hammers. It's clearly not as easy as you seem to think, nor is breakable glass considered to be a safety feature. Sure there may be a few edge cases where it might come in 'handy', but overall it's better to have stronger glass than weaker, not even by a little bit.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Corning isn't giving the pricing which means 99% of you can't afford it. I suspect it will be a high-end luxury car feature or option for many years until the price comes down to sane levels. Cars are way bigger than smart phones and tablets. Already some performance cars advertise thinner glass to save weight.
Polycarbonate is very soft and scratches easily making it suck for anything with wipers on it.
Although if you used 10mm polycarbonate I seriously doubt you could ever break it.
From what I've seen, all you need is ask a 16 years old girl to be really careful with the window because it's expensive. She'll break it within minutes.
At least that seems to be the case of every other thing with gorilla glass. Should work here too.
It turns out that putting out a press release like this is considerably cheaper than buying ads.
Or do you mean the cost of the glass?
I'm sorry to hear about your weak-ass arms.
Eat the rich.
"I thought the point of automobile glass was to shatter"
It doesn't shatter, it crumbles, and sticks to an internal plastic layer that prevents it from flying away.
*COUGH*
Please reverse the target of your stupidity for parroting bad advice without doing ANY research:
Only if you're ALREADY SO DEEP THAT THE WATER IS HIGH ENOUGH TO HOLD THE DOOR SHUT.
Cars do not sink immediately. What you do is unroll the window and get out ASAP. You DO NOT wait for it to sink. In fact, what you do is MAKE it sink quicker if you have to. Unroll the window and let it go down quick but - as said, for the first long interval it will happily bob on the surface while you crawl out of the window, no harm.
DO NOT WAIT FOR IT TO SINK. Get out.
If you going down and the door is submerged, it will eventually open. Don't wait for that. Unroll the window and get out.
Prats sitting in cars they could easily have escaped minutes ago because of some rumour is exactly the kind of thing that shouldn't be happening.