Leather alternatives don’t have to have fake textures or be a heavy burden on the environment. Most faux leather is made from fossil fuel-derived plastic. But the main raw materials for Uncaged Innovations’ samples are wheat, soybeans, corn and other grains. The final product feels and feels very similar to a variety of real animal leathers, and one even smells like the real thing.
“Leather is not one size fits all,” Stephanie Downs, the company’s co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. “There are thousands of different kinds of leather out there: from different animals, different thicknesses, different tanning processes. We had to develop a material that was easy to customize.”
Uncaged Innovations revealed that it is currently working with Cradle, the innovation arm of Hyundai, to optimize its materials to suit automotive scenarios. The goal is to create a durable, animal-friendly and climate-friendly material that can be used to replace real leather in cars and trucks. Uncaged says its material has a 95% lower carbon footprint than genuine leather.
Just last month, the startup announced a partnership with Jaguar Land Rover.
Leather alternatives are almost as old as the automotive industry—the original model T was used in the early Ford Model T as far back as 1913. While its quality has improved over the years, many alternatives still don't match the feel of real leather.
Uncaged’s materials are currently used in vegan-friendly handbags and watch straps. While fashion brands may be the more focused customers, carmakers are certainly a more promising target group. The number of hides consumed for a car's leather interior varies from as little as two to as many as 14, depending on the area of leather coverage in the interior and how picky the car manufacturer is about quality. Because cows live outdoors, their skin often gets scars from mosquito bites and contact with barbed wire. These imperfections mean that a significant amount of leather raw material is wasted.
Uncaged's material is produced in a factory, so it maintains a uniform consistency that cowhide cannot.
Downs said Uncaged's products are positioned in the mid-market compared to traditional genuine leather. The unit price for small-volume orders is less than $10 per square foot (approximately 70 yuan per square meter), and the price for large-volume orders may be only half that of small-volume orders. "This will not only reduce the burden on the environment, but also save costs for enterprises."
Downs revealed that Uncaged is currently being tested for several automakers. Heat resistance is the biggest technical challenge, but the company has made progress.
"An automobile company requires that our materials can withstand 500 hours of testing at 95 degrees Celsius. In the first round of experiments, our materials have been able to pass the 500-hour test at 85 degrees Celsius," she said.
Downs said that the key to Uncaged’s ability to make products closer to the texture of genuine leather is that it mimics the chemical structure of genuine leather itself.
Genuine leather is made by tanning animal hides, a process that stabilizes the fibrous collagen in the leather.
“We started putting a lot of effort into testing hundreds of different plant ingredients and ingredient combinations to see if we could get them to form fibrous structures,” Downs said. “Ultimately, (co-founder Xiaokun Wang) developed a way to convert plant proteins into these fibrous structures.”
The material is then laid on a cloth base made of plant fibers. According to Downes, both cloth-based and plant-based leather are biodegradable themselves. In many applications, a 0.01 mm thick layer of bio-based polyurethane (a type of plastic) is also added to the surface. “This allows us to drastically modify the appearance of the material and also change its feel—either making it more frictional or making it extremely smooth.”
Uncaged also adds mineral pigments to create the desired color and can imprint various textures on the surface of the material. In addition, by adding flower extracts, the material can be given a variety of different scents. One of the samples on my desk has a sweet floral fragrance.
"Some automobile companies have communicated with us and hope that we can develop their own signature scent. There are also handbag manufacturers asking: 'Can the material emit our brand's signature scent?'" Downs said, "The demand for this kind of customized scent is much more popular than I imagined."
Author: Tim De Chant