This is how the seats of Porsche look, made using 3D printing that adapts to your body

Porsche breaks away with a new 3D printing technology for the seats of its cars that adapt to the body and allow you to choose between different degrees of firmness.

For now it is only a conceptual study. But you can bet that we won’t have to wait long to see Porsche applying this technology to its production cars before long. It is about 3D printing applied to its bucket seats.

3D printing is increasingly used in the automotive sector. In fact, in every imaginable application, not just in the car world. We have already seen racing cars 3D printed, 3D printed gloves to protect the hands of workers in factories, wheels manufactured using 3D printing techniques, and even Bugatti tested titanium brake calipers manufactured with this technology, to name a few examples.

Now, Porsche presents seats in which both the seat base and the backrest are partly manufactured with a 3D printed structure. The goal? To offer the maximum possibility of customization to the customer… or to the driver, because this technique is also ideal for use in the world of competition, where it allows drivers to choose their configuration tailored to them.

Maximum lightness and maximum support

This type of seat will not only allow Porsche customers in the future to experience in their road cars a technology imported from racing. The benefits are evident from the greater support provided by a seat that ergonomically adapts to the morphology of each customer, but also from a lower weight.

Porsche proposes a construction called “sandwich type”, with a series of layers. The first is a support of expanded polypropylene, to which a second breathable layer of polyurethane is attached, which adheres to the first during the seat manufacturing process using 3D printing. The outer layer is made of a material that Porsche calls Racetex, with perforations for climate control.

Series application planned for this same year

Porsche confirms that this technology will be available as an optional feature for the Porsche 911 and Porsche 718 ranges in May of this same year. Initially it will be a limited series of 40 prototypes of this type of seat, intended for use on European circuits, always in combination with six-point harness belts.

After this first phase, which will serve to collect opinions and suggestions for future evolution and development, from mid-2021 customers who wish to do so will be able to order their personalized 3D seats with three different levels of hardness, through the Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur program.

Related information of interest:

• Test drive Porsche 911 Carrera S: you’re going to love it
• Test drive Porsche 718 Cayman GTS and Boxster GTS