This piece starts out lighthearted but then takes a very invasive turn.*
From the Wall Street Journal, June 7:
As self-driving cars become more of a possibility, companies are exploring designs that enhance travel experiences
Revamped navigation systems will plan your ideal route, make hotel reservations and even teach you about the surrounding geography. Car interiors could transform into a mobile movie theater. And lie-flat massaging seats will activate during endless highway stretches.
As self-driving cars become more of a possibility, companies are exploring vehicles that break design convention, sans forward-facing seats, steering wheels or dashboards, allowing for enhanced in-car travel experiences.
“We’re looking at hands-on experiences that offer the best of both worlds, where you can have the ultimate luxury of being chauffeured, and still have that visceral experience of travel and all the information you want and need,” says Bryan Nesbitt, head of global design at Cadillac.
Cadillac is already dipping its toes in experiential designs. Nesbitt and his team recently debuted a trio of concepts: a tapered two-person grand tourer, with bed-like seats and a shared curved screen for long weekends away; a boxy six-person recreational vehicle for exploring nature and socializing with friends; and a single-person, vertical takeoff-and-landing vehicle for accessing hard-to-reach locales.
Artificial-intelligence-powered onboard technology could play a key role, allowing for passengers to merge their digital life with their on-the-road experience. That means “your content, your media and your personal preferences will be more deeply integrated into the vehicle,” says Patrick Brady, vice president for Google’s automotive efforts.
“Your mobile phone will be the center of your digital ecosystem, and will seamlessly transition that information to connect and personalize experiences for each occupant,” he says.
Some notable concerns may have to be mitigated before these changes take place. “Cars are designed for safety and visibility, and current regulation is organized around this,” says Alan Macey, associate chair of undergraduate transportation design at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. “Autonomy could significantly redefine what a vehicle looks like, and could privilege social interaction, comfort or other things. But impact and safety standards for these cars would presumably need to change.”
Here’s how automakers are reimagining road trips:
Navigating the roads
Contemporary navigation systems excel at finding the quickest path from point A to B. But on a road trip, speed isn’t the only variable. Passengers want more freedom in how they make their journey.
“Kind of like an audio equalizer, we’ll have presets for different genres—the scenic route, the direct route, the offbeat route—but you can also go in and customize it,” says Cadillac’s Nesbitt.
Spot an interesting landmark? Your navigation system will be able to tell you all about it.
“You pass a historical marker, a mountain, an interesting building or a restaurant, and because it will see what you see, it will be able to, without you saying the name of the object, tell you about them,” says Google’s Brady.
Externally mounted cameras integrated into the car’s safety systems could project real-time images for passengers to see, alongside reviews or historical details about roadside sites pulled from the internet, according to Brady. The windshield, embedded with augmented-reality capabilities, could act as the screen.
And motion-tracking wearables like rings or wristbands, or sensors that recognize gestures or eye movements, could allow passengers to interact directly with the projected information.
As passengers pass time onboard, generative AI could help them find the perfect lunch spot or route because it will be able to understand conversational speech. “You could say, ‘Find a Mexican restaurant along my route with good vegan options and fast service that’s near an EV charging station,’” says Brady. “Or, ‘I’m driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles, plan scenic stops every hour.’”
AI could even generate immersive virtual street-by-street views of an entire road trip itinerary before departing so travelers can familiarize themselves with their plans, says Brady. “We’ve been mapping the world for years, so you can feel the vibe of the place before you go, or understand your route in advance.”
Or, conceivably, passengers could skip the drive and just experience the whole trip from home on a VR headset. “You could actually imagine yourself walking down a street in your destination, if you want to,” Brady says.
Wellness treatment onboard
Luxury automakers are already trying to garner a share of the $500 billion annual American wellness market, with seats that massage and provide kinesthetic routines to help reduce fatigue. When cars drive themselves, these opportunities will increase.With high-quality audio, surrounding screens, scent atomizers and lie-flat seats, the car could become “a place for cocooning” on the road, so occupants are well-rested when they arrive at their destination, says Joern Freyer, vice president of user interface and user experience for BMW.
Vehicles of the future will also offer ways to monitor your health. In-seat biometric sensors could track heart rate and attentiveness and then provide prompts to relax or meditate. They could even detect symptoms of a heart attack or stroke, and automatically provide warnings, pull the car over, or alert the authorities, says Freyer. In fact, his team is currently collaborating with a Berlin hospital to develop such a concept.
“We are looking to find ways to learn with in-car sensors to detect these health markers very early, and avoid situations where someone gets unconscious or has a health crisis and then a very critical accident occurs,” he says.
AI-endowed vehicles could locate fueling stations with robotic chargers or gas pumps, so occupants can sleep through pit stops, says Macey of the ArtCenter College of Design. He cautions, however, against including toilets in road-trip vehicles. “There’s a lot of baggage that comes along with that,” he says....
Our boilerplate introduction to one-half of this writing duo:
Readers who have been with us for a while know I get a kick out of Ogilvy's Rory Sutherland. He's a first rate marketer and enough of a behavioural scientist to be able to hold his own in conversation with Kahneman.
Additionally, he holds, along with Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger, that most nebulous of corporate titles: Vice-Chairman.
And here is the mini-bio for the other half of the team:
Pete Dyson was a member of Ogilvy’s behavioral science practice from 2013 to 2020. In 2020, he joined the UK Department for Transport as principal behavioral scientist, tasked with the Covid-19 response, sustainable behavior change, and internal capability building. is also a semi-professional Ironman triathlete and in 2021 broke the record for the fastest non-stop cycle from Land’s End to London. He is the author of Transport for Humans (with Rory Sutherland).
From Behavioral Scientist, November 16, 2021....
Afterwards I felt I had maybe been on the wrong end of an "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" dissimulation....