{"id":2527,"date":"2022-12-26T11:10:39","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T02:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asahi-kasei-mobility.com\/en\/interview\/session-2-next-generation-concept-car%e3%80%90akxy2%e3%80%91\/"},"modified":"2024-08-29T15:48:24","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T06:48:24","slug":"creating-for-tomorrow_3","status":"publish","type":"interview","link":"https:\/\/asahi-kasei-mobility.com\/en\/interview\/creating-for-tomorrow_3\/","title":{"rendered":"Session 3: Next Generation Concept Car\u3010AKXY2\u3011"},"content":{"rendered":"

AKXY2 represents “Sustainability” for futuristic cars and forward-thinking people<\/h2>\n

Activities pertaining to various new product concepts are accelerating more than ever before as the world transitions into a more sustainable society paired with various economic measures spurred by the pandemic such as the \u201cgreen recovery.\u201d These activities should be considered as essential steps towards a brighter future rather than a tough road ahead. Sustainability is the theme people are the most interested in among AKXY2\u2019s theme of the Three Ss (Society, Satisfaction, Sustainability). We are exemplifying Asahi Kasei\u2019s sustainability contributions in a way people can get excited and happy about with technology throughout AKXY2. For example, we have developed a hard-coating agent \u00a0made of resin material for the vehicle that allows greater flexibility for designs that cannot be achieved with glass materials as well as a curing agent for paint coating that gives the body an awe-inspiring appearance and is manufactured in a way that poses less burden on the environment. In this third session, we will focus on these use cases and explain what type of mobility visions AKXY2 can express from interviews with 7 representatives of technologies involved in this project: Naoki Tanaka, Keigo Sasaki, Atsutoshi Sugimoto, Akira Iwamoto, Shingo Yamamoto, Masakazu Yamauchi, and Yuuki Nakanishi. In addition, Takafumi Honjo, who has been part of this series of interviews since Session 1, will also be joining us.<\/p>\n

Click here to contact us<\/a> about Asahi Kasei\u2019s products and usage examples.<\/p>\n

Contact us<\/a><\/div>\n
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\u25b2(From left in back row)\u00a0 Aluminium Paste Business Unit: Akira Iwamoto, ASAHI KASEI METALS LTD. Atsutoshi Sugimoto | Aluminium Paste Business Unit: Shingo Yamamoto | Mobility Strategy Dept. : Takafumi Honjo<\/span>
(From Left in front row) Functional Nanostructure Materials Development Department: Keigo Sasaki |Performance Coating Materials Division: Naoki Tanaka | Duranate Department: Masakazu Yamauchi and Yuki Nakanishi<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Incorporating Asahi Kasei\u2019s sustainable technologies into \u201cAKXY2\u201d<\/h2>\n

Honjo: \u201cSome of the most prevalent examples of sustainability initiatives in the automotive industry are: powering the vehicle with electricity or hydrogen rather than gasoline, implementing more recyclable raw materials, and reducing CO2<\/sub> emissions produced during manufacturing and driving. We first aimed to proactively contribute to initiatives that protect the global environment by analyzing all of our in-house technologies and choosing the ones that will allow us to contribute to sustainability the most, then embedding them into AKXY2 to help OEMs better envision what a realistic.<\/p>\n

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\u25b2Takafumi Honjo – Asahi Kasei Corporation, Mobility Strategy Dept.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u25a0Sustainability product example 01: Hard-coating agent for plastic glazing<\/h2>\n

New R&D! from glass to plastic \u2013 Water-based coating agent with value beyond material replacement<\/h2>\n
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\u25b2 Naoki Tanaka – Asahi Kasei Corporation- Performance Coating Materials Division<\/p><\/div>\n

Tanaka: \u201cThe hard-coating agent for our plastic glazing process that we adopted for AKXY2 is\u00a0 still under development and has not yet been commercialized. Although the industry has been working on replacing glass with plastics to optimize vehicle weight reduction for a long time, the technology improvement of paint coating agents for lighter weight vehicles has been the last missing piece of the puzzle. Polycarbonate, the main material of plastic windows, tends to get scratched when windshield wipers are activated as well as when windows roll up and down. In addition, if plastic windows are left outdoors, they turn yellow and lose transparency. To resolve these problems, we developed a coating agent with a few micrometers thickness that can prevent scratches and maintain original transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u25b2The hard-coating agent for plastic glazing that we have developed has high wear resistance, high weatherability (UV resistance) and excellent chemical resistance. It has also been proven able to maintain original plastic transparency.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sasaki: \u201cThis new coating agent is water-based, so it eliminates the emission of toxic VOCs (volatile organic compounds), a concern for organic solvents that have been used in automotive coating materials for many decades. Therefore, our coating agent can assure the safety of coating line operators on top of being more environmentally friendly than other coating agents with the same performance. In addition, replacing glass windows with plastic can reduce the weight by 40-50%, which improves gas mileage and reduces CO2<\/sub> emissions.<\/p>\n

One of the benefits of plastic windows made from polycarbonate is the heightened level of design flexibility. Thus, it was possible to design windows with a high curvature for AKXY2. In the future, polycarbonate would be an ideal choice for exploring solutions beyond the confines of existing design, and when paired with our hard-coating agent, scratch resistance and maintained transparency also become a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\t