The development of new modular seats is an important issue in the automotive industry.
However, is very time consuming and costly. Virtual models and hybrid prototypes could
accelerate the car seats development process. The hybrid prototypes are mainly manufactured by
rapid prototyping with multi materials. The objective of this paper is to establish a methodology
to develop innovative lightweight multi-functional, modular car seats to be used in Multi-Purpose
Vehicles (MPV), by means of FEA simulation and rapid prototyping additive/subtractive
technologies utilizing multi materials. A case study is presented to validate the developed
methodology. The manufactured hybrid prototype’s reproduces the main functionalities of the
MPV modular seat, namely its three key positions: normal, stored and table.Mechanical Engineerin
