The new 2017 Ford GT will feature the new stronger, thinner, lighter glass, according to an article by Michael Martinez in The Detroit News newspaper. Thoughts?
I’ll reserve judgment. They’re making a big deal out of the idea that it’s the same stuff that’s used in smart phones. Well, smart phones tend to crack when flexed or dropped, so if the same holds true for using it as auto glass, don’t corner and don’t get hit by a flying rock.
It’s certainly a game changer for the folks that manufacture Gorilla Glass.
I guess every little bit of weight saved is important. If all 6 windows in a sedan are changed to this glass, it could save between 20 and 50 pounds per vehicle, maybe 1% or so. I’d call it incremental in the weight saving game, not revolutionary.
I Think The Scratch Resistance Is Promising. Maybe Less Windshield Chipping & Pitting?
The articles says that it’s tough to break, but emergency breakage is possible, but how do you do that?
Cost of Gorilla Glass, compared with conventional glass, isn’t mentioned. I wonder how much difference?
CSA
Get a bigger hammer ( second law of carpentry).
They state ‘Rescue teams will be able to get into cars if they have to’ Right now side windows can be shattered in a second or two, the windshield can be cut out in less than half a minute. Easy to get past the glass to get access to an accident victim. Some rear windows are being made of some type of poly carbonate, we have to drill a hole and get a sawzall to take those out. Real PITA. I hope the Gorilla Glass is not as difficult. We may have to start looking at the auto glass installer tools to remove these.
@jtsanders
"Get a bigger hammer ( second law of carpentry)."
I’ll bite.
The first law? Measure twice, cut once?
CSA
My last smartphone got scratched up because I had some sand in my pocket. Gorilla glass in the smartphone world is scratch resistant when compared to early PDA displays, which were frequently made of plastic and often had a layer of flexible, soft plastic on top of them to facilitate the touch-screen technology that was dominant at the time. Those things got scratched up if you looked at them wrong.
But in practice all having Gorilla glass means is that you’re probably not going to scratch your phone by leaving it face down on a night stand, and the cat won’t do damage if his claws scrape across the screen while he’s walking around on all your stuff that he knows he’s not supposed to be on.
But if you put it in your pocket alongside keys, or grit, it’s gonna get scratched.
This makes me suspect that blowing grit will pit your car windshield just as much as it does now.
But in practice all having Gorilla glass means is that you're probably not going to scratch your phone by leaving it face down on a night stand, and the cat won't do damage if his claws scrape across the screen while he's walking around on all your stuff that he knows he's not supposed to be on.
Gorilla glass has been in smart phones for years…and now in LCD TV’s The big advantage in TV’s is manufacturers don’t have to build an extra sub-frame…the Gorilla glass is strong enough. That really makes things lighter and easier to manufacturer…and fewer things to break…thus cheaper.
The glass was invented in the 60’s…it was used first in the auto industry for race cars.
I know it’s been in smart phones for years, but in the old days when they were called PDAs, it wasn’t. 
Also some cheaper smartphones even as little as 4 years ago (and in the case of one pathetic HTC piece of junk that was priced at a premium level, even some of the expensive ones) had non-Gorilla glass in their displays.
I worked in a very high tech factory. The complete statement there was: Don’t force it. Get a bigger hammer.
Totally tongue in cheek. We had so-called black boxes that sold for $500,000.
Another tongue-in-cheek name for hammer was critical adjustment tool.
I read the link. Sounds like a good product. I particularly like the “scratch resistant” part.
I wonder how much it’ll add to the vehicle cost.
I’ll reserve judgement until later. Sometimes…news about a new product is sometimes fabricated in the mind of those who report on it. A reporter can make a great product sound bad or a bad product sound great. It just depends on how they want to spin it.
I’ll adopt a wait and see attitude due to concerns about flexing in use and what happens to it after a number of repeat heating and cooling cycles.
@“common sense answer”, the first law is:
Get a hammer. The second follows logically from the first.
Seriously, I imagine if the Gorilla Glass window is struck with enough force, it will break. Added mass, or a bigger hammer, may increase the force to the point that the glass will break. It probably won’t shatter since it is safety glass, but fracturing the windshield could give the firefighters an entry to start removing the entire windshield. A sharp point on a hammer might concentrate the force and provide the same breakage.
I hope at the same time they make the power windows water proof so that they work if the vehicle is submerged. I keep a tool to shatter the window just in case but don’t think it’ll work on this glass. Years ago it was just a matter of rolling the window down so you could open the door but that doesn’t always work now.
OK4450, I have the same questions. I’ll add to that thermal shock.
But in truth, it’ll probably work well. Class, largely very impure SiO2, is extremely strong but brittle. More pure forms of SiO2, like fused silica and fused quartz, are far stronger AND more shatter resistant than regular glass. It’s the impurities in regular glass that are its weakness. Sandwiched with a few layers of the right polymer, fused quartz or fused silica, should be extremely strong and shatter resistant.
I admit to having assumed in my statement that this is what’s being used. It’s the only thing I know of that fits the description. I’ve personally tried scratching fused silica, the toughest of the SiO2 selection listed above, and I was totally unable to no matter what I tried. We also thermal shocked it and thermal cycled it in the lab and that stuff is almost indestructible. We were using 450F on the high temp and a temperature well below zero (cannot remember exactly what) on the low side.
But I also seem to recall that fused silica was a lot more more expensive than regular glass.
Here’s a quick explanation of Gorilla Glass:
Thanks for the link. Sounds like my assumption may be incorrect.
I guess I’ll have to wait and see.