Well, Schott Spezialglas AG's "Conturan" glass is sort of a big deal, in an anonymous, hiding-in-the-open kind of way.
- The special glass is more permeable to light and cuts reflection significantly.
- According to a German study, a driver processes an average of eight sensations per second. We sometimes spend an extra fraction of a second looking at our instrument cluster due to glaring from the instrument cluster's glass. Conturan reflects light at a rate of only 0.5% (instrument panel glass in other cars reflect at 8%).
- With such a low reflection rate, the instrument cluster does not have to sit so deep in a dashboard, away from the sun. Phaeton designers thus had more freedom in where to place the cluster.
- Normal glass is etched to reduce reflection. The trade-off there is a drop in transparency. With Conturan, three metal oxide coatings are applied to both sides instead. Each coating has a maximum thickness of 1/100,000,000 of a millimeter.
Photo source.
As everything involved with this car it is impressive (love this trivia and bits of information) but come on! There is attention to detail and there is this. Sort of unnecessary attention to things that are not that important. Much more disruptive is a reflection of a dashboard in a windshield. Or low sun in winter. I hope that it took VW about 10 man-minutes figuring this glass and that they just picked it from a catalogue ;)
ReplyDeleteHope im making sense and i am making myself clear :)
@ardas: You are as clear as Conturan!
ReplyDeleteVery impressive also check out this link http://www.tintdude.com/phaeton.html its about more tech stuff on the Pharton from the point of view of a window tinter.
ReplyDelete@T-5 Killer: Two words: Damn Gina!
ReplyDelete