PHOENIX, Feb. 23, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Building on its reputation for world-class care & cleaning products that are specialty formulated for boats, RVs, powersports vehicles, snowmobiles, and more, Bling Sauce reveals its newest addition to the Bling power-cleaning lineup, Glass Treatment & Cleaner Kit.

Today’s Boats, RVs, Automobiles & other Powersport vehicles utilize electronic screens and displays to provide a world of information at your fingertips. But fingers are also loaded with oils, dirt, and microbes. Glass Sauce was designed to spray directly on the sensitive electronic screens and your windshield to remove dirt, grease, oils, spots, and germs while providing a clean, streak-free appearance. Glass Sauce goes a step further with an added polymer technology that bonds to the surface, resisting scratches and continuously helps repel water and oil residues. A must-have to ensure you can track the GPS in your boat or UTV, you don’t miss that huge fish on your fish finder and you can easily select your favorite songs in your car.

Premium features include:

• Cleans and protects glass longer
• Polymer technology helps repel water and oil residue
• Polymer bonds to surface to help resist scratching
• Ideal for electronic screens and displays
• Anti-Static
• Safe for all surfaces
• Tested & Approved by leading digital screen manufacturers.

Navico Group has tested and approved Bling Sauce’s Glass Sauce for cleaning their Digital screen displays. Lowrance®, Simrad®, B & G®, CZone® and MotorGuide® are part of this premier group of companies that supply the Marine, RV & Powersports markets.

In explaining the company’s continued commitment to this new product, Boat Bling, President & CEO Patrick Jones explains, “Our mission is about inspiring pride in ownership. There is no better way to do that than to develop a product that provides a solution to a growing problem, making it easy for our customers to clean after a day on the water with friends and family.”

Boat Bling, Inc has global distribution, recommendations from the leading OEM manufacturers, and being sold at over 6,000 retail outlets in 10 countries and on 4 continents including some of the biggest retailer names in the world, such as West Marine, Bass Pro, Cabela’s, Academy Sports, Overton’s, Walmart, and more. Everyone has a goal and a dream that they believe they can achieve, and on behalf of the entire team at Boat Bling, we are humbled, extremely grateful, and appreciative of the support and loyalty from you, our customers. 

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SOURCE Bling Sauce

– Preventing distortion of autonomous vehicle sensor signals by removing scratches in 60 seconds with sunlight – Published in the January issue of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces

Newswise — Safety issues of self-driving cars have emerged due to frequent self-driving traffic accidents. A self-healing lens material that can prevent car accidents that occur due to signal distortion by restoring scratches on the sensor surface of the self-driving car has been developed.

The Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT, President Lee, Young Kuk) research team led by Dr. Kim Jin Chul, Park Young Il, and Jeong Ji-Eun* and Prof. Kim Hak-Rin and Prof. Cheong In Woo in Kyungpook National University (KNU) developed a material that heals scratches on the sensor of an autonomous vehicle.
^{* Technology from「Can scratches on car surfaces disappear when exposed to sunlight? : A new self-healing coating material」, published in 2022, has been further developed to enable not only structural recovery but also functional recovery such as recovery of an optical signal.}

When this self-healing optical material is used in the sensor of an autonomous vehicle, it is expected that the life expectancy of the product can be increased and future technology that can prevent malfunctions due to surface damage can be secured.

A lens is a tool that collects or disperses light and is used in many everyday optical devices such as cameras, cell phones, and glasses. However, if the lens surface is damaged by a scratch, the image or optical signal received by the optical device can be severely distorted.

Recently, traffic accidents caused by recognition errors and malfunctions of vision systems* such as LiDAR sensors and image sensors of self-driving cars have repeatedly occurred. As a result, confidence in the safety of self-driving cars is rather low**.
^{* LIDAR sensors and image sensors that acts as the ‘eyes’ of an autonomous vehicle
** The results of a survey by the American Automobile Association showed that the number of respondents who were afraid of using self-driving cars increased by 13% from 55% in 2022 to 68% in 2023.}

The KRICT-KNU joint research team developed a transparent lens material that can remove scratches on the sensor surface within 60 seconds when focused sunlight is irradiated using a simple tool such as a magnifying glass.

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Because self-healing is favorable when molecular movement within the polymer is free, flexible materials are generally advantageous in securing excellent self-healing performance. However, lenses or protecting coating materials are made of hard materials, and thus it is very difficult to impart a self-healing function. To solve this problem, the research team combined a thiourethane structure, which is already being used as a lens material, and a transparent photothermal dye* to design a ‘dynamic chemical bond’ in which the polymers repeat disassembly and recombination under irradiation of sunlight.
^{* A dye that converts light energy into heat energy}

In particular, the developed transparent organic photothermal dye can selectively absorb light of a specific near-infrared wavelength (850-1050 nm) without interfering with the visible light region (350-850 nm) used for image sensors and the near-infrared region (~1550 nm) used for LiDAR sensors.

When sunlight is absorbed by photothermal dyes, the surface temperature of the developed lens material rises as the light energy is converted into thermal energy. Subsequently, the increased surface temperature makes it possible to self-heal a surface scratch by repeating the dissociation and recombination of chemical bonds in the polythiourethane structure.

The developed lens material shows perfect self-healing even when scratches cross each other, and provides excellent resilience, maintaining 100% of the self-healing efficiency even if the process of scratching and healing at the same location is repeated more than five times.

Dr. Lee Young Kuk, president of KRICT, said, “This technology is a platform technology that synthesizes self-healing lens materials using both an inexpensive high-refractive polymer material and a photothermal dye. It is expected to be widely used in various applications such as autonomous vehicle sensors as well as glasses and cameras.”

Source:  National Research Council of Science and Technology

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Nissan marks four decades of U.S. manufacturing; prepares for ‘electrified’ future

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The story began on June 16, 1983, when the first Nissan manufactured in the U.S.− a white 720 pickup − rolled off the assembly line in Smyrna, marking the genesis of automotive production in Tennessee.

Nissan has since expanded its U.S. footprint to include a powertrain plant in Decherd, Tennessee in 1997 and a vehicle assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi in 2003. Collectively, these facilities have proudly built¹ nearly 20 million vehicles and 13 million engines in the U.S. for customers around the globe.

“What began with one pickup truck has turned into four decades of manufacturing excellence,” said Nissan Americas Chairperson Jérémie Papin. “This milestone isn’t just about the products we’ve built and sold over the past 40 years. It’s also about applauding Nissan’s more than 21,000 U.S. employees who will take us into our future − our electrified future − and continue to enhance our products and services for customers.”

Stronger communities

Nissan prides itself on being supportive of its neighbors and helping to build stronger communities. Over the past 40 years, the company and its manufacturing team members have positively impacted communities through charitable contributions and volunteerism, including:

• 43,000 volunteer hours
• 38 homes constructed with Habitat for Humanity
• Nearly $26,000,000 in United Way donations
• Nearly $2,000,000 in educational scholarships
• 36,000 pints of blood donated to the American Red Cross

Electrified future

The vehicles of the near future are connected and electric. Nissan is supporting that transition by building factories of the future today as part of its long-term vision, Ambition 2030, which includes plans for 27 electrified models globally, including 19 all-electric vehicles, by 2030.

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In 2022, Nissan announced a $500 million investment to transform its Canton, Mississippi facility into a center for U.S. EV production to support two all-new, all-electric vehicles in 2025. This investment is one of several the company is planning in the U.S. over the next five years, supporting its target of 40% of U.S. vehicle sales to be fully electric, by 2030.

To learn more about Nissan’s U.S. manufacturing operations, visit the company’s newly launched website www.NissanManufacturing.com.   

1. Manufactured with U.S. and imported parts.

For more information about our products, services and commitment to sustainable mobility, visit nissanusa.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and see all our latest videos on YouTube.

Source: Nissan Motors