Ford patented an exterior airbag system

Ford has filed a patent utility for an exterior airbag that will deploy from behind a car’s grille throughout collisions.

Filed with the US Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO) on Mar. 1, 2021, and printed Sept. 1, the applying describes an airbag system much like those already mandated within the U.S. for car interiors as a supplemental restraint system (SRS) to guard occupants.

Like standard airbags, the exterior airbag would use pyrotechnics to deploy and inflate, and could be triggered by sensors detecting a collision. On this case, although, the airbag could be mounted within the front-end construction of a car, deploying from behind the grille and overlaying the forefront of the hood.

Within the utility, Ford mentioned this technique may very well be utilized in most sorts of personal passenger autos—together with automobiles, SUVs, crossovers, pickup vehicles, and minivans—in addition to taxis or buses. It is also utilized in autonomous autos, in line with Ford.

Ford is not the one firm to experiment with exterior airbags. In 2019, German auto provider ZF confirmed a prototype exterior airbag system for side-impact crashes. Designed to offer a further crumple zone to assist soak up the power of impacts, the exterior airbag may scale back damage severity by 40%, ZF mentioned on the time.

Whereas ZF appeared pretty assured in its tech, claiming software program and sensors may deploy the exterior airbag in simply 100 milliseconds and have it absolutely inflated earlier than contact with any objects or different autos, the corporate hasn’t put it into manufacturing but. Maybe Ford may have higher luck with its forward-deploying model of this tech.