Modular Vehicle Dashboard With Configurable Accessory Mounting
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current vehicle dashboards for electric city cars lack a design that balances aesthetic appeal with functionality and user customization, while also being cost-effective and simple to construct.
Innovation Solution
A modular dashboard design featuring a main wall with a planar horizontal support surface and upwardly extending surfaces, equipped with an array of holes for locking coupling pins, allowing users to configure and position various accessories such as audio units, phone supports, and containers, ensuring safety compliance through specific hole patterns and pin orientations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a modular dashboard design with multiple holes and coupling pins is implemented, then adaptability and user customization are improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The dashboard is segmented into a main wall with multiple holes and separate accessories with coupling pins. This allows the dashboard to be divided into functional modules that can be independently configured, improving adaptability while keeping each component relatively simple in structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The array of holes and coupling pins creates a universal mounting system that can accommodate various types of accessories (audio units, phone supports, containers) at different positions. This multi-functional interface resolves the contradiction by providing high adaptability through a standardized, relatively simple structural element.
2Ease of operation
If accessories are positioned on the dashboard using an array of holes and coupling pins, then ease of operation and user configuration are improved, but manufacturing precision requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The holes are pre-arranged in a predetermined array pattern on the dashboard main wall during manufacturing. This preliminary configuration of mounting points allows users to easily position accessories without requiring complex alignment procedures, while the precision requirements are confined to the initial manufacturing stage rather than ongoing user operations.
3Adaptability or versatility
If a separate instrument panel supported by a support arm is added, then functionality and information display are improved, but device complexity and construction cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The instrument panel is positioned in a separate spatial dimension above the main dashboard surface, supported by a vertical support arm. This dimensional separation allows the instrument panel to provide additional functionality without complicating the horizontal dashboard layout, and the support arm serves as a simple structural connector rather than a complex mechanism.
Data Source
Figure 1~2
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Figure 5~6
AI summary
A vehicle includes a dashboard (1), and a kit of accessories for the dashboard (1). The dashboard (1) has a main wall (2) which has holes (6) provided for receiving coupling pins (60) of a plurality of accessories (7,10) of the dashboard (1), so that the dashboard (1) can be configured by the end user by arranging one or more accessories in positions on the dashboard (1) which can be selected as desired. The main wall (2) of the dashboard defines a support surface (2A) which is substantially planar and horizontal, said surface extending, at its front side and at its two lateral sides, into a surface (2B) which progressively climbs upwardly. The holes (6) form ordered and substantially uniform arrays of holes arranged on the support surface (2A) and the upwardly climbing surface (2B). At least at some specific areas of the dashboard (1), the ordered arrays of holes (6) include sub-groups of holes (6) arranged according to predetermined patterns. One or more of said accessories have pins (60) arranged according to said predetermined patterns, so that said accessories can be positioned as desired in different positions on the dashboard, but always within said specific areas of the dashboard. The distribution of holes on the dashboard comprises sub-groups of holes in which one or more holes have a different cross-section from the cross-section of the other holes of the same sub-group and in that at least one of said accessories has pins which have the same pattern as that of one or more sub-groups, with one or more pins which have cross-sections corresponding to said different cross-sections, so that the accessory must be mounted within determined areas of the dashboard and with a determined orientation.