Vicki von Holzhausen has been making a reputation for herself advertising a vegan leather-based substitute for ladies’s purses, footwear and furnishings.
Now, she’s taking her materials to the auto enterprise.
Late final yr, von Holzhausen, the title of her Los Angeles materials lab and design home, produced vegan seat covers for a specifically created model of the Tesla Model S Plaid on show on the Petersen Automotive Museum.
The designer makes clear — she will not be a provider to Tesla. But the undertaking served as discover to automakers and to Tier 1 inside suppliers that von Holzhausen is in the home.
“There’s definitely a desire from customers for this,” she advised Automotive News.
“We’re a material innovation company,” von Holzhausen stated, providing her elevator clarification of the enterprise she started to assemble in 2015. “We produce next-generation materials that replace both leather and plastic. We create things out of our materials in order to help people understand how to replace these incumbent materials.”
Why would automakers be enthusiastic about changing these supplies?
Von Holzhausen, whose profession took her by way of design roles at Audi, Mercedes-Benz and General Motors, stated a shift has begun in world automotive supplies. And it simply so occurs that this shift aligns along with her personal worldview.
“This has been a lifelong thing for me, because I’ve been a vegetarian since 19, and I’ve been vegan all through the process of starting and building this business,” von Holzhausen stated. “I’ve always been very concerned about sustainability and the ethical treatment of animals. So creating new materials that really go beyond that has been a personal journey.”
The progress of vegetarian diets amongst shoppers has fueled the shift, whereas automakers are issuing new marching orders to their provide chains to embrace components and supplies which are environmentally benign, sustainable and recyclable.
“The industry wants to move away from petroleum plastics,” stated von Holzhausen. “You cannot put untreated leather in a car interior. It has no functionality. So you’re really talking about leather layered with petroleum plastics.”
Von Holzhausen’s innovation could be summed up in a single phrase — bamboo, the woody, fast-growing plant sturdy sufficient to function constructing materials and, in some Asian cities, as multistory scaffolding for work on skyscrapers.
Through the miracles of chemistry and materials engineering, the von Holzhausen staff converts “banbu,” as they name it, into supple purposes which are as delicate as lambskin.
Bamboo leather-based will not be 100% plant, however extra like 83 %. The key for von Holzhausen is that its banbu is now certified for automotive purposes.
Source: www.autonews.com
