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Corning Concept Car Features All-Glass Dash

But what happens if you crash?

For all you tech enthusiasts out there -- Corning is betting on your willingness to get into a car that features a dashboard made entirely of glass.

The famous processor of precision glass and ceramics recently unveiled its “Connected Concept Car,” to a roomful of investors, and it features a pretty cutting-edge console made of Gorilla Glass – which is the same stuff that your iPhone screen uses.

CNN Money is reporting that the car's glass center console features so much inherent strength that a thin sheet of it, at room temperature, bends like a sheet of plastic. Apparently, that made it easier to create continuous glass shapes that can bend around complex contours.

Corning also says “the displays are bright and clear enough to see even in bright daylight and they aren't prone to damage or discoloration from the sun.” Additionally, in the event of a wreck, the glass would crack in that spider web fashion that your phone does when you drop it, rather than into shards of potentially lethal sharp glass.

It seems Corning’s desire is to eventually get more Gorilla Glass into vehicles, replacing the soda lime glass that’s currently used on windows and windshields because when a Gorilla windshield reportedly breaks, the glass shatters to the outside of the vehicle, rather than into the interior. However, says CNN Money, the price point on that is still way too high. To put it in perspective, the Ford GT Supercar uses it now because it allows for a much thinner and lighter windshield, but the price of the GT is $450,000. On current regular-people vehicles, the premium might be too high, as it could double the cost of the windshield.

I’m Anna Wells and this is IEN Now.

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