Hasta La Gadget!

See the leather door panel with near-perfect stitching on that 2010 Ford? It’s not leather, but that’s no surprise, when you can make vinyl fabric and plastics look like leather. The one held up by Ford interior design manager Lon Zaback is actually spray-molded polyurethane: plastic sprayed in multiple steps into a mold, then peeled off when dry. The process is good enough to recreate leather stitching or (this example isn’t on cars) overlay a lifelike zipper and zipper pull onto faux leather.

All of this is what physicist and Ford staff technical specialist Mahendra Dassanayake calls “the  democratization of technology,” or finding ways to match or improve what a Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, or BMW does in its cars for half the cost. For instance, where BMW uses a costlier transflective display to keep its navigation screens from washing out in sunlight on its convertibles, Ford is starting to use a simpler micro reflective layer behind a traditional TFT display. 

Ford recently held a media event in New York and showcased several other
technologies it’s working on that together put a common “Ford DNA”
imprint on Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury vehicles. More after the jump.