Automotive News - Traverse City - August 6, 2019 - 9

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS CAR MBS DAILY

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2019

Why Cooper Standard invests in better seals

ETROIT - Vehicles are
changing, and one of the
companies leading the
charge is Cooper Standard
Automotive, a manufacturer of seals
for doors, trunks and hatchbacks;
rubber hoses for the fluids under the
hood; and metal brake lines.
One new product developed by the
Novi, Mich., supplier is a lightweight
elastomer material called Fortrex
that replaces the rubber seals around
doors.
Fortrex weighs less, lasts longer
and is more effective at keeping noise
out of the interior than rubber, according to Christopher Couch, Cooper Standard's chief innovation officer. Couch spoke with Staff Reporter
Richard Truett at the company's r&d
center in suburban Farmington Hills,
Mich., about Cooper Standard's r&d
and the direction of automotive materials. Here are edited excerpts.

overnight, and you don't
get to turn those on and off
based on the economic flavor of the business this
month. You have to sustain
the investments to bring
some of those high-impact
innovations to fruition.

&
QA

Something that stylists always crave is that sleek, flat
appearance. The aesthetics
are nice. But the impact on
wind noise is significant.
You don't have a lot of
room left for big, fat, cushy
seals anymore in that styling concept. Fortrex material, with reduced profiles,
provides a solution for that.
We've booked our first order for the Flush Glass system.

What else is Cooper
Standard working on that
would prevent noise from
entering the vehicle?
CHRISTOPHER
What we call our Flush
COUCH
Glass solution. If you look
at cars today, no matter what the With new sealing technologies,
door construction is, there's a differ- how important is it for Cooper Stanence in the outboard position of the dard to be involved with the autopillars and the seal and the glass. maker early in the design process?

If we can get in early, we can help
automakers optimize. If we come in
late in the game, they say "just do a
swap on the material." We can do
that, but you haven't really captured
the full benefit of the material.
The seals on a vehicle such as the
Lincoln Continental weigh about 17
pounds, which is not much compared with components such as
powertrains or body structures.
Why focus on lighter seals?
We're talking about a 30 percent
weight reduction over today's rubber
seals. To make that change and take
out that much weight is significant.
You recently became the owner of a

battery-electric vehicle. Has it
taught you anything that might influence Cooper Standard's products?
These cars can be eerily quiet. The
things you didn't notice before all of
a sudden come to the foreground as
the noise of the powertrain goes
away.
I drove my EV recently on a road
trip to Holland, Mich. The thing that
annoyed me the most was when the
passenger seat was empty, the seat
belt buckle tapped along the side of
the B-pillar. I never would have noticed it in a regular vehicle.
Also, the noise of the cars passing
me was surprising. Good seals make
that a lot better. m

Q: What's driving the need for new
materials?
A: The desire for lightweighting has
been around forever, and the desire
for cheaper materials has been
around forever. But there is truly
some new stuff happening in the industry. Electrification is a big driver.
And that's not just pure EVs - it's hybrid-electric vehicles and maybe
someday fuel cell vehicles. Autonomous and mobility initiatives are
another factor.
Will materials that we've never
seen before be used in vehicles?
You can do some pretty magical
stuff based on advanced structural
materials. But it all has a price at the
end of the day. The cost versus
weight versus performance curves
will always be relevant.
What are some projects Cooper
Standard is working on in terms of
future automotive products that
feature new materials?
We're working on the next generation of internal combustion engine
hoses. ICE isn't dead yet. It won't be
dead for a long time. We are working
on plastic innovations that are more
appropriate for the cooling systems on
electric vehicles. You could use a
heavy old ICE rubber hose on an electric vehicle, but that's overkill. We need
to optimize a plastic solution for that.
How did Fortrex change from oldstyle rubber to the new material?
The Fortrex journey is half chemical
and half processing. The chemistry is
very different. It is not ethylene propylene diene monomer or other commonly used synthetic rubbers. It's not
plastic. The broadest description I can
give you is that plastic parts are typically thermoplastic. Fortrex uses a chemical curing process. It is a different way
to make the material.
How long did it take Cooper Standard to get Fortrex to market?
From the first idea to booking the
first order was about five years. It was
a significant investment for the company that required sustained r&d
commitment over many years. I
think that's a testament to us being
serious when we talk about being an
innovation-driven company. It is
part of our strategy.
Our mission statement speaks of
winning through innovations in material science. That doesn't come

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Automotive News - Traverse City - August 6, 2019

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