New cars, for the first time after purchase, all have the typical “new-car-smell”. As time goes by, things change, the car fills up with other smells and many remember with nostalgia that slightly unnatural smell of when the car had just left the dealership. It is a common desire of various car owners to get into the car and smell it like the first time, so much so that on the market it is also possible to find car perfumes with a “new car” flavor. This is especially true in Western countries but it is not true in China, where the smell of new cars is becoming a problem: not everyone likes it and for car manufacturers it is a real problem.
According to research by JD Power, a US company specializing in car market analysis, more than 10 percent of Chinese drivers in 2018 complained about the smell of new cars. “Unpleasant car odors are one of the main problems in the Chinese market,” said Brent Gruber, senior director of JD Power: “to give an idea, for the Chinese it is twice as much a problem as that of excessive consumption of fuel”. For automotive companies this is not a marginal fact, especially considering that China is the first market in the world in the automotive sector, and meeting the needs of Chinese consumers is increasingly important for all manufacturers.
Ford, for example, conducted research focused exclusively on car odors in 2017: At its research facility in Nanjing, China, it called 18 odor experts with the aim of identifying every type of odor present in cars sold in the village. The experts smell every single material used for the construction and then give a judgment that goes from “not perceptible” to “extremely annoying”: in cases where the smell is particularly bad, they can decide to return the material to the supplier.
What worries Chinese customers most of all is the possible danger of those smells. The smell of new cars, in fact, is mainly caused by a set of chemical compounds used to treat the plastic and leather with which the interiors of cars are coated, or by some materials used to make cars fireproof. These are “volatile organic compounds”, chemical compounds in a gaseous state, the exposure of which can cause irritation to the eyes, nose and throat, and in some cases even more serious health problems: in the case of cars, however, the risks are minimal, because the quantities of these products are very low and because the gases disperse almost completely in a few days.
To remedy this problem, Ford has filed a patent in the United States for a system that eliminates new car odor. “The smell of a new car is part of American culture, but we know the Chinese don't like it. This patent is the result of years of research and is just one of the ideas we are considering for the future, ”said Debbie Mielewski, head of Ford's department that deals with the sustainability of materials used in cars. The patent concerns a system for self-driving cars which, in favorable weather conditions, would allow them to park independently in the sun, open the windows and turn on the heating. It is a process that Ford refers to as “cooking” and which would eliminate all the chemical compounds from the car that cause the smell of a new car. However, it must be borne in mind that all large companies file a huge number of patents every year, and it is not certain that they will then develop all the products related to them.
