| A typical knee bolster EA in today’s car is made of stamped steel or aluminum that allows for very little flexibility in tuning its performance to the vehicle-specific parameters such as crash pulse, impact locations and packaging. Often, such an EA ends up being a multiple piece, stamped and welded assembly that require considerable engineering resources (i.e.,design, analysis, prototyping and testing) to meet the crash performance. Also, the tooling for such multiple stampings are relatively expensive, especially when such cost is to be amortized for a low or moderate volume program. Due to the fact that such an EA is an assembly, the piece price for such a unit is not low either. |
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