The technology can be applied to rear-view mirrors, inside or out, as well as to sunroofs, side glass, rear windows and a new type of translucent plastic sun visors.
Webasto, for example, is hoping to get a seven-digit sum for the license to its sunroof solar panel, which generates electricity to ventilate parked cars on hot summer days.
Imagine trying to add a sunroof to a tank.
Options are limited to a sunroof, a combination navigation-music hard-drive system and Goodyear F1 Supercar tires.
In such cases, the resin piece connected to the sunroof cable is broken and should be replaced, along with the plastic spacers.
The outside of the car is made from a mixture of carbon, aluminium and high-strength steel, with a single pane of glass stretching from the car's windshield to its sunroof.
Mr. Prechter accompanied the president on a trade mission to Japan in 1992, during which he signed a deal giving his company rights to put sunroofs on Hondas.
In addition to making sunroofs, he began manufacturing specialty vehicles for the film industry.
Timothy Zilke, president of the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence, says that today's vehicles are "sophisticated and complex machines" and that "the average car has six to 20 computers that help manage everything from the sunroof to anti-lock braking system to the electronically controlled transmission".
In Suffolk, where police have recorded 63 transphobic hate crimes since 2012, a group of children aged seven to nine verbally abused a transgender person, a rock was used to smash the sunroof of another victim's car and an assault was carried out with a blunt object.
