Ford Motor Company has filed a patent for a deployable brace with airbags that may be used in future Ford EVs, Ford Authority has learned.
The patent was filed on May 31st, 2023, published on December 5th, 2024, and assigned serial number 0399844.
Ford has filed a number of patents outlining various ways it’s aiming to make its future vehicles safer over the past few months, including ideas for airbags mounted on movable bars, front pillar deployable airbags, and an underhood airbag, to name just a few. This newly published patent for a deployable brace with airbags continues this trend in a familiar way, though in this case, it pertains specifically to future Ford EVs – not just ICE models.
Here, Ford proposes using a special sort of brace underneath its all-electric models that’s part of the vehicle’s battery tray as well. Since a punctured battery can present a major fire risk, the concept here is to prevent that from happening in a couple of different ways – for one, the brace itself would provide some protection in the event of an accident, but it also holds a movable brace that can slide along the track. That brace holds airbags, which would inflate if sensors detect that a collision is imminent, much the way airbags mounted in other places already do.
The benefit of such a design is that it doesn’t matter which side an impact occurs, as sliding tracks and airbags would be located on both sides of the vehicle, and airbags would only inflate on the side where an impact is about to happen. At its core, this idea is quite simple – which is true of the aforementioned patents as well – but it could prove to be particularly useful in the future if and when EVs become as prevalent as many hope they will.
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