SE ATING
Adient recently
set up a joint venture
with Boeing to form
an aircraft seating
division called
Adient Aerospace
French carmaker Renault has teamed up
with Filatures du Parc, a firm specialised
in carded yarn, and Adient, which makes
nearly one in every three automotive seats
worldwide. They have created a 100%
recycled textile product that sees its first
use covering the seats, doors and dashboard
of the third-generation Renault Zoe electric
city car. Made from safety belts, textile scraps
and recycled plastic bottles, the new patented
short-loop manufacturing process reduces the carbon
footprint by 60% compared with standard processes.
SHORT-LOOP RECYCLING
Adient clearly sees wider potential for such solutions.
“The development of fabrics made from short-loop
recycled products is undeniably the future of our
business,” comments Mathias Daynie, director of the
Adient Fabrics plant in Laroque d’Olmes, France.
“The prospects are very important both in the
automotive industry and in other sectors of activity
that will certainly follow this approach from an
environmental, ethical and economic point of view.”
WHEN FABRIC IS FINER
Premium automotive seating is seeing
a shift from its traditional mainstay of
leather upholstery towards materials
such as wool. This is partly due to
animal welfare concerns and partly
because new techniques have made
the latter materials more luxurious
and robust than before.
Danish supplier Kvadrat, known
in the furniture business for its
natural textiles, recently collaborated
with Land Rover to develop its first
automotive-grade 30% wool, 70%
polyester material. It is featured
initially on the Range Rover Velar.
businessjetinteriorsinternational.com
026 JANUARY 2020
“The premium-level textile by
Kvadrat passes all the same tests
as our leather upholstery and you
could argue it has some technical
specifications that leather doesn’t,
in terms of breathability for one,”
says Amy Frascella, Land Rover’s
chief designer of colour and materials.
The wool doesn’t involve cruelty to
sheep either. “Farmers must comply
with national legislation and respect
the Five Freedoms of animal welfare,”
says Njusja de Gier, Kvadrat’s senior
vice president for marketing. “Wool
used in Kvadrat textiles is free range.”
Renault and Adient are far from alone
in their sustainable endeavours; a plethora
of other eco fabrics from Tesla, VW, Volvo
and more are either already in production
or coming soon.
EMBEDDED CONTROLS
A third trend in automotive interiors is
the idea of embedding controls to prevent
clutter arising from the addition of new functions. Long
a staple of concept cars, where buttons were made flush
with surfaces and/or only revealed themselves through
backlighting or when a user’s hand drew near, now they’re
starting to make production, and in surprisingly regular
cars too. In 2019 the Chinese automotive group Geely
launched an electric car sub-brand called Geometry,
implementing ‘under-the-skin’ interior controls on a
saloon priced at circa £17,000 (US$21,990/€19,917). This
kind of flush-mounted control, integrated in armrests or
sidewall panels perhaps, could be a trend set to stay.
But of all these trends, which could be most adaptable
for use in business jets? “All three could create a seating
experience unlike any other,” enthuses Elliott Koehler,
creative director at aviation seat design expert JPA
Design. “By using intelligent biometric monitors and
sensors that generate rich ergonomic data, smart textiles
with AI-controlled adjustment will provide just the right
amount of support throughout a long-haul journey. Seats
that adapt to the passenger, direct communication of
seating position, pressure points and posture will enable
a travel experience free of exhaustion and deep vein
thrombosis. Biometric monitoring can also advance
to healthcare beyond seating, to guide activities, diet
and rest based on individual passengers’ bodies and
destinations to eliminate travel fatigue.”
Whether driving or flying then, seats could soon
get much more clever and comfortable.
ABOVE: FILATURES DU PARC
TRANSFORMS FIBRES FROM
SEATBELTS, TEXTILES AND PLASTIC
BOTTLES INTO A NEW TEXTILE
USED IN THE LATEST GENERATION
OF RENAULT’S ZOE CAR, USING
A PROCESS DEVOID OF CHEMICAL
OR THERMAL TRANSFORMATION
ROLAND MOURON
PLANIMONTEUR JEAN -BRICE LEMAL
/businessjetinteriorsinternational.com
