Shapeshifting for Safety

"I can't find the name of the metal, but I'm curious about how it works."

Rent Terminator III.

The metal is NiTiNol alloy. It shifts between austenite and martensite states at a defined temperature to form an actuator.

Taken from http://www.dynalloy.com/:

Intier Closures a premier Tier 1 automotive supplier and Dynalloy have formed a world wide exclusive relationship to implement Flexinol® actuator wire into the automotive closures market segment.

I guess they will design momentary closure to permit the vehicule occupants to escape after a crash.

http://www.gigaconcept.com/

I just assumed that it would fuse the door shut. I'm sure that EMS will hate them. As it is they have to spend tons of time training on how to cut apart various vehicles. With stronger alloys thy are having harder times getting the jaws of life to do much.

Not to rain on your parade, but you really should have a mechanical engineer look at your web site home page. The gears, as shown on your web page, are engaged in an impossible configuration. If you look at the arrangement, rotating any one gear would be impossible because they are locked up.

Our company management accidentally produced a PowerPoint slide with a very similar mechanical arrangement and it instantly became a corporate joke. It was sadly ironic that the image did seem to be representative of some of the management decisions. However, it was something that you would never want to broadcast to potential customers.

In your case, prospective customers might scratch their heads and look elsewhere for solutions to their problems.

We were hoping nobody would notice =)
The current icons are placeholders; we are working on a major revamp of the site and we just figured we'd fix that when we rework everything else.
You are the first person to notice it though so kudos to you.

Thank you for this wise comment.

We are a startup and used a template for our site...

"My other car is a sexy robot from the future"

The hot ticket is the same technology employed by the M1 tank. They use reactive armor to fend off impacts.

I would think that you couldn't beat that kind of protection for door side impacts. The downside is you need to be very careful when opening your door, particularly if you open it and it strikes the door of another vehicle with reactive armor.

I thought tat ablative armor actually exploded just before impact and that was how it deflected the energy. Personally I'd rather not have C4 strapped to the sides of my car =)

Ah, the Germans and their expensive toys....

"Vee vill have der best carz mit der mozzt advanzed teknologee, und you vill buy dem!"

If you have any doubt as to the mentality, just view the current crop of VW commercials with the Hip Hop Wannabe (or at least pretending to) German Engineer and his Handsome Helga assistant where they take the Home Boys' American cars and "pimp your ride" with disastrous consequences, so they can replace it with an "already tricked out" VW.

The American Way (my idea):

Accomplish the same result with solenoid driven dead bolts. Hook them right into the air bag and/or seat belt sensors. Stiffen the whole passenger compartment cocoon that way and let sheet metal do what it does best, crumple and absorb energy.

More effective, more reliable, current technology, less cost. Dead bolts are a better idea mechanically anyway, since most of the side impact is taken by the reinforcing bars, not the sheet metal of the doors and door frames.

My 2 pfennigs' worth.