Recycled Rubber Car Seat Upholstery

Modern Meadow teams up with Mercedes to create alternative leather

Modern Meadow, a bio-design firm based in Nutley, New Jersey has entered a development partnership with Mercedes-Benz AG. In this context, Mercedes-Benz used Modern Meadow’s Innovera™ to develop a bio-design leather alternative for its CONCEPT AMG GT XX technology program. The aim of the partnership is to further develop the material for series production and set new standards in vehicle interiors.

The Innovera™ leather alternative consists of a combination of recycled rubber derived from racing car tires, plant-based proteins and biopolymers produced through a recycling process conducted in accordance with the mass balance approach. Because it replicates key properties of the collagens found in leather, the material offers a level of design freedom equivalent to that of traditional leather and can be produced with different finishes such as nubuck, full grain or suede, and in various colors and heptics.

“We are redefining automotive interior possibilities with Innovera™,” CEO David Williamson, said. “In our development partnership with Mercedes-Benz, we used Innovera™ to create a new luxury leather alternative without sacrificing aesthetics, versatility and texture. It looks and feels as good as it performs.”

Modern Meadow’s Innovera™ achieves more than 80 percent renewable carbon content, is completely animal-free, requires no special preservation or storage conditions and is adaptable to any standard manufacturing process.
In the CONCEPT AMG GT XX technology program, one scrap tire provides the basis for approximately four square meters of this new, bio-designed material.

The black seat pads of the bucket seats are covered with the Nappa-look variant. The bio-design means the leather alternative is breathable and waterproof, as well as lighter than traditional materials. Its maximum tensile strength is also twice as high as that of traditional materials, making it very robust and performant.

With these unique properties, the material represents the new dimension of performance, which the technology program stands for in the vehicle’s interior. Modern Meadow’s bio-design technology used to create this leather alternative included recycled racing tires that were used in tough competition on AMG GT3 customer racing cars.