Wide Recognition for Prototype
Auto Experts Marvel at Featherweight Interior / Praise for Sustainability Concept of STRÄHLE + HESS.
Althengstett (k-w). When it comes to automotive interiors, INTERauto is the leading event in Europe for original equipment manufacturers and their suppliers. This year, designers and developers from Althengstett took the laurels in Hall 4 of the Cologne Fair Grounds, even making it into the largest German news agency, dpa. This was a vertical take-off for STRÄHLE + HESS, participating in 2010 for the first time at the INTERauto trade fair.
The “nios”, with its interior by STRÄHLE + HESS, is the car of the future: high quality, environmentally oriented, and ultra-light. The world’s most fuel-economic automotive cabin generated tremendous interest, as did the sustainability concept practiced by the trendsetter in textile applications for the automotive world. It demonstrates that high quality and ecologically responsible production cycles are compatible, as CEO Kirsten Schönharting explained to the enthusiastic experts for automotive interiors gathered in Cologne for their annual December trade fair.
In the “nios”, nature helps to save weight and fuel: facalis, the lightest natural fiber in the world, grows in the tropics. Working with it in cooperation with a group of students, as chief designer Claudia Khalil related, led to the successful development of an ultra-light vehicle that weighs only 210 kilograms, without any reduction in comfort. The automotive interior of the future was born, with STRÄHLE + HESS right on target in the estimation of professional colleagues. Facalis, incidentally, resists water and ‘breathes’.
For the ecological balance of the car, weight reduction in the interior is a positive factor, said product developer Armin Scheugenpflug. This makes for a significant saving on fuel. Designer Julia Müller is confident that the “nios” will also be popular with customers: “The consumer wants to drive a car with a clear conscience,” she said in an interview with dpa. In the trend toward eco-cars, the sustainable interior design offers decisive advantages. In addition to seats, surface covering, ventilation system and trunk interior, the natural fiber is even used for dashboards, as it is extremely flexible. The “nios” drives 300 kilometers on one liter of fuel, and the whole car can be recycled at the end of its road career.
STRÄHLE + HESS systematically cultivates ecologically responsible production processes aimed at eco-efficiency. The design concept is ‘cradle to cradle’: with cyclical processes oriented, wherever possible, to the theses of the German chemist Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart and the US-American architect William McDonough. No substance involved in production is to be allowed to go to waste. Materials from products optimized for biological cycles serve as biological nutrients that can be released into the environment with no negative effect. Technical nutrients, such as metals or polymers, are handled in technical processes with closed cycles.
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