Gorilla glass used for smartphones is adopted for Ford's super car "Ford GT"

Super car marketed by Ford of the automaker in 2016Ford GT"Corning's high-strength glass which is often used for smartphone screens"Gorilla glassIt was revealed that it will be adopted. It is said that high driving performance is realized by adopting light weight · high strength glass.

Ford and Corning Introduce Industry - First Gorilla Glass Hybrid Windshield Technology on All - New Ford GT Supercar | Ford Media Center
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2015/12/15/industry-first-gorilla-glass-hybrid-windshield-on-all-new-ford-GT.html

Gorilla glass with high scratch resistance has been widely adopted mainly for smartphones, but the next active place seems to spread to the field of automobiles. In the new model "Ford GT" scheduled to be marketed at the beginning of 2016, gorilla glass is adopted as a glass engine cover located at the rear of the windshield and the vehicle body, and weight reduction of the car body is attempted.


By adopting gorilla glass, we realized weighing more than 30% and reducing thickness from 25% to 50% compared with conventional glass. Still, the strength of the glass itself seems to be equal to or higher than conventional. In fact, the new Ford GT realizes that the weight of 5.4 kg is reduced by glass alone. Especially, by reducing the weight of the glass located at the top of the car body, the center of gravity position of the car body is lowered, and it seems that the movement performance of the vehicle is improving.


The collaboration between the two companies said that the reason for Ford's approach to Corning, which had been pursuing the development of weight reduction technology for the body, came true. "Laminated glass" widely used in current automobiles realizes impact resistance and scattering of glass fragments by sandwiching a plastic plastic film between a plurality of glass plates, but this is roughly equivalent to Ford Technology that began to be used in automobiles by Henry Ford founded. It seems that Ford will adopt gorilla glass for next-generation automotive glass, it is also an interesting event.

In adopting to the automobile, Ford said that using a vehicle fitted with gorilla glasses, we have confirmed the performance by carrying out rollover tests, such as strength and rough road surface and rolling over the car body, and wind tunnel experiments using vehicles fitted with gorilla glass. In the following movie you can see a scene of such exam.


Gorilla glass is used also as part of the bulkhead separating the passenger space and the engine room in addition to the windshield and the engine cover. This probably refers to bulkhead glass that blocks noise from the engine placed behind the driver seat.

It is certain that there is no doubt that safety is improved by adopting the gorilla glass, but it is interesting that the Ford is pushing up the performance performance improvement of the vehicle to the front. It is interesting in the future that this technology will be used for general vehicles as well.