Saturday, June 25, 2016

Not just a car company - a mobility company

Honda is a mobility company—we move people. But, for us, safety is an enormous priority. We don’t just want to move you; we want to move you safely.

Real World Tests

That’s why we created another world’s first: a multi-directional crash test facility. Our multi-directional vehicle-to-vehicle crash test facility at the Tochigi R&D center opened in 2001 and is the world's first indoor all-weather facility of its type. In addition to standard barrier tests, the facility tests in situations that simulate actual traffic collisions between vehicles.

Virtual Tests

To supplement these tests, Honda partnered with 3DEXCITE to develop software that results in extremely reliable, accurate, and cost-effective crash simulations. These simulations are so accurate that the metal deformation from a virtual test and a real test can differ as little as 15mm. The simulations can also be run again and again with differing inputs/parameters in a much smaller time period. This kind of flexibility and affordability allows Honda to make the road safer for everybody on it by engineering for worst case scenarios in an unprecedented way. See more in the video below.

 

Your Safety - Our Passion - By Design


Honda designs all of its vehicles with safety in mind, not only the safety of Honda vehicle occupants, but safety for the occupants of other vehicles and all road users, including pedestrians.


“Passive” and “Active” Safety Systems

There are two main types of safety systems: active and passive. “Active safety” technologies, like those in the Honda Sensing™ suite of safety and driver assistive technologies, are working while you’re driving. This includes the automatic emergency braking (a component of CMBS) and other technologies that help mitigate the potential for a collision or its severity. Other technologies, such as rearview cameras, can augment your view of the road.

Then, there are “passive safety” systems. These are the systems that you hope you never need. But they’re critical to your safety in the event of a collision. One of most innovative Honda passive safety systems is the ACE™ Body Structure.


ACE™ stands for Advanced Compatibility Engineering™, and it’s a Honda-exclusive body design that uses a network of front frame structures to absorb and deflect the energy from a frontal collision. This helps reduce the force transferred to the cabin and more evenly disperse the forces transferred to other vehicles involved. That means it’s not just Honda drivers that are safer in the event of a collision—it’s everybody.

To help us create a safer driving experience for our customers—and to continue the refining ACE™ Body Structure—Honda operates two of the world’s most sophisticated crash safety research and testing facilities, in Ohio and Japan. This includes the world’s first multi-directional crash test facility at our automobile R&D center in Japan. Not all collisions in the real world are head on, so Honda didn’t want to test only head-on collisions, but many types of crash scenarios including: car-to-car impacts, car-to-barrier collisions, front, side and rear impacts and offset and oblique-angle collisions.



Virtually Protecting our Customers

Honda has recently helped develop an advanced safety visualization technology called Real Impact. This technology creates highly detailed three-dimensional models of a vehicle’s crash safety structure and allows Honda engineers and designers to better visualize how these systems work in a variety of collision scenarios.

Engineers are able to manipulate the 3D rendering, rotate the view in any direction and strip away parts of the vehicle to isolate a section or component for more thorough analysis. The crash barrier can also be rendered transparent in the virtual environment so the immediate effects of a crash can be viewed from multiple points of view, including from the driver's seat.

We do this work because it’s part of our company DNA – clean, safe fun. We work every day to create safer driving experiences for everybody on the road. Honda asks everyone on the road to help make it even safer by buckling up, putting away phones, and texting only when you’ve arrived safely at your destination.

Our Collision-Free Future - The Power of Dreams continues...


OUR COLLISION-FREE FUTURE

Creating a world where collisions no longer happen is one of our most monumental dreams yet, and we’re already working toward making it come true. Join us on our mission to reduce collisions by 50% by 2020, and make them a thing of the past by 2040.


We are passionate about the safety of not just everyone who gets in a Honda, but of everyone who shares the road with them too — from other drivers, to bicyclists, to pedestrians.

That’s why we are leading society toward a radically transformed mobility experience, one that is safer than most can currently even imagine. Our goal is a world where collisions simply no longer happen.

We call this dream a Cooperative Car Society, and we’re already working hard to make it real. It will be made possible by a remarkable convergence of technologies, including self-driving cars, connectivity between vehicles and everyone else on the road, and other unprecedented collision-stopping capabilities.



“We have a responsibility — to each other, to our industry, and, most importantly, to society — to think bigger.” —Frank Paluch, President of Honda R&D Americas, Inc.



On the way to building this collision-free world, highly automated vehicles will become the platform for a completely transformed mobility experience.


By the Year 2020

People, vehicles and infrastructure will be connected like never before through an omni-directional safety system. New technologies will emerge that will help to reduce driver workload and enable a 50% reduction in collisions involving Honda vehicles.


By the Year 2030

It won’t be only cars that are connected now. By this time technology will have comprehensively linked all road users, including pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcycle riders.


By the Year 2040

Honda-connected vehicles will be collision-free, paving the way for radical changes in the way people move and live. We wholeheartedly expect our efforts in this area to inspire other vehicle makers too, and we look forward to being inspired by them in turn.

2017 Ridgeline - Must See This

There's been a lot of interest recently in pickup truck beds and the 2017 Ridgeline has one of the most versatile in the industry. CLICK HERE to watch and retweet a video that shows 60 rough-cut landscaping stones, weighing about 14 to 16 pounds each, being dropped from a loader into the Ridgeline's standard composite bed. Is the Ridgeline bed tough? You be the judge.





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