This piece starts out lighthearted but then takes a very invasive turn.*
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....
