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Plastics nowadays are playing a vital role in the ongoing innovation that is driving the automotive industry to higher performance, safety and sustainability levels. Plastics have allowed automotive designers to meet stringent carbon emission targets and fulfill consumer demands for highly fuel efficient vehicles by reducing vehicle weight while also reducing cost. The next step in weight reduction is to decrease the plastic part thickness further to the minimum possible. But with such reduction in part thickness, it becomes very difficult to meet the side impact crash regulations, and thus it becomes imperative to increase the Impact properties of such light weight materials. Keeping in line with the above, this paper describes the development of a new blend of Polypropylene which has high impact characteristics to meet crash compliance, high MFR to reduce cycle time and allow for easy filling of low thickness parts and keeping specific gravity in check to reduce weight.

Seat upholstery plays an important role in defining overall interior quality and aesthetics of automobiles. Over a period of time, different weather conditions and varied usage pattern affects the performance of seat upholstery material and deteriorates the interior aesthetics. With this, the major challenge for an OEM is to devise upholstery which can retain the performance over the life of the vehicle with a balance of cost and weight. In automotive applications, different materials are used for seating upholstery e.g. PVC, woven fabric, knit fabric, spacer fabric, leather. This paper will focus mainly on analyzing the ageing effect on automotive fabrics having woven construction. This paper analyses and evolves the correlation of the different woven fabrics used in automotive seat upholstery and effect of ageing due to usage condition (durability) and climatic conditions.