GM Patents See-Through Windshield Pillars for Better Visibility
General Motors is working on a new perspective with a new pillar patent design.
Justin Westbrook Mar 14, 2022
A new patent filing shows
General Motors is developing a new design many of us have long pondered about: a car with transparent A-pillars that expand your field of view out of the windshield. GM's filing claims the design is intended mostly to improve driver awareness during left-handed turns, without jeopardizing the safety of the vehicle's crash structure.
The A-pillar, which is the support beam on either side of the windshield, has gone pretty much unchanged in its purpose for decades, both to stop the roof from caving in on the occupants in the event of a rollover crash while also offering a pathway for frontal crash forces to be distributed up and down around the front-seat passengers via the floor rails and roof structure. The only downside is the pillar's location, which is directly in the line of sight between the driver and the road, hence the desire for a new solution.
With the latest advancements in material technology, many of us have wondered if it would be possible to keep the A-pillar and all of its structural importance, and simply make it out of a transparent material. Some automakers have attempted to achieve pillar-windows in the past. The old Buick Century had a lovely windshield that wrapped its corners to meet the door, though it lacked much safety, considering there was virtually no A-pillar.
Some modern cars, like the Renault Espace and Grand Scenic, have massive dashboard windows in front of the doors that's close to the same design. A few years ago, Continental announced a camera-and-screen setup that projected an exterior image onto a screen attached to the A-pillar. Jag had
a transparent pillar patent back in 2014,
Toyota had a similar concept back in 2017 that involved trick mirrors, and now it looks like the engineers at General Motors may be finally giving truly transparent pillars a serious shot.
