Think of the car of the future, and you are likely to think of a radical design concept, with a striking and unusual exterior design. But the exterior is just that; it’s what lies beneath and behind that really matters. Whilst the powertrain engineers work out what happens under the hood, the interior suppliers are already trying to work out what you see, feel and experience when you open the door and step in.
The car of the future needs the interior of the future, and that interior needs to be smart and multi-functional, as Vice President Advanced Product Development and Sales at Johnson Controls Automotive Interiors, Han Hendriks, explains to Megatrends.
Hendriks heads up a cross functional global innovation team, which was brought together by grouping previously separate innovation functions into one organisation. The team reports directly to the company’s president, and has its own set of financial KPIs worked out together with the company CFO to ensure a good return on investment.
“When we introduced this new model, we also started engaging much more with our customers,” explains Hendriks. “We found that the people higher up in the OEM organisations we spoke to did not ask about door panels, for example, but wanted to know what the future holds for automotive interiors. They wanted to know where we think it is going.”
To be able to give answer to such questions, JCI began a project called IV25, which stands for Interior Vision 2025. “We asked researchers, designers and engineers to go and figure out where three very important segments of the automotive industry are going to go.”
The first of these was to identify the future of China luxury. “China will be the largest luxury market in the world, and we think that is going to impact global luxury. We see premium content increase with every vehicle, and premium content cascading down to the lower segments. I think by 2020, the China luxury vehicle market will be one and a half times the US and Europe combined. Up to now it’s been traditional luxury that has been embraced by Chinese consumers looking to European luxury, for example. But now a younger Chinese generation is entering a stage of their lives in 2025 where they can afford luxury vehicles, and we think this generation has the pride, ability and confidence to make choices of what they think is luxury, what they think is premium, and not only look at the western world but start to mix in Chinese heritage.”
The second area of focus was Urban AB, which looked at the future of small cars in big cities, and alongside that, the transition from vehicle ownership to vehicle ‘usership’. This is the concept of pay-as-you-go car clubs, where the car that you use varies depending on your needs at the time. “You may, for example, have a subscription that allows you to use different cars depending on the needs that you have.” And those cars will have to meet very different requirements, explains Hendriks. “The car is not your car, but the first thing you want is that it smells fresh when you open it, and does not smell of the person before you. You want it to be clean, so we need to think about odour management technology and self-cleaning nano surfaces.”
Interestingly, Hendriks sees a strong link between car usership and autonomous car technology. “The vehicle will play a different role. I may visit a city in Europe with friends and need a car for the evening, but it will be a very different vehicle from the one I will use by myself at the weekend. I may have a subscription to a car brand, or an independent subscription that allows me to use different cars without being tied to one brand. Imagine then an autonomous car as part of that. I want to leave at 8pm, but I don’t want to pick up the car. The car will come to me. That will enable this whole car usership versus ownership concept, because the car will always be there when I need it.”
Some personalisation of the vehicle interior already exists, with key fobs retaining specific personal settings information, such as seat position and infotainment system preferences. The next step is for OEMs and suppliers to prepare an interior that ‘recognises’ the next driver as they approach, explains Hendriks. “I approach a vehicle and it recognises me. It smells fresh and clean. I enter the vehicle, and every surface is smart. The graphics that I created with my app are now visible on the panels when I open the door. The seat adjusts to my position, the navigation system and radio are set. It will become my car interior, independent of what vehicle I enter.”
Hendriks believes autonomous driving will be the game changer for automotive interiors of the future, so much so that the impact of autonomous driving on the interior was the third area of focus for the researchers. Hendriks is convinced that in 2025, autonomous cars will be a fact of life, for reasons of safety, foremost, followed by convenience and comfort. “We call it repurposing time.” Hendriks also cites an aging generation with a high level of purchasing power as having an influence on the introduction of autonomous cars. “They do not want to give up their mobility – and they’re the legislation makers. So they’ll be driving legislation and technology and investment to enable autonomous driving for that generation.”
When JCI began this research two and a half years ago, Hendriks admits that across the team there was some scepticism. Those sceptics have now seen that autonomous drive technology is already here, he grins.
Current car interiors are set up specifically for people to sit strapped into fixed seats facing forwards. With autonomous cars able to talk to each other and thus able to avoid collisions, the repurposing of time will mean the repurposing of the interior. Critical will be the legislation that dictates the length of time that someone in the car doing things other than driving needs to take to switch full attention to the task of driving and take back control from the vehicle. “We think ten to 15 seconds will be the maximum time.” Any re-designing of the complete interior will still need the driver to be back behind the wheel. “You can’t fall asleep on the back seat, but you can start to turn the seat to a different position. You can start to design a table that comes out of the floor or the instrument panel so that you can pull up your laptop, or use an entertainment system, have some food, and do different things while driving.”
Hendriks says two dates will play a key role in the introduction of the autonomous car: 2020 and 2025. “One OEM that we talked to about autonomous driving said they’re going to introduce a vehicle in around 2020, but it’s going to be a normal vehicle with an autonomous driving option. Except for the autonomous driving technology, it will be the same car. The IP, the floor, the seats, all the safety systems will be the same in the standard version and the autonomous version. So a transition will happen between 2020 and 2025, but then the first signs of change in the interior of an autonomous car will become visible. It will be a different end-user experience in those vehicles. During a 40 minute commute, you will be doing different things for 30 minutes.”
The findings of the research have been combined and Johnson Controls has begun to develop initial views on where these three aspects of the future of interiors will lead. Many of the findings and feedback are being combined into the company’s next demonstrator vehicle, which will debut at the Detroit auto show in January 2015. That will feature a full automotive interior with numerous innovations that are ready for market but that have not yet been shown. “In that demonstrator, we are introducing a number of new user experiences, including self driving car technology. Hendriks hints that it will answer some of the questions around what the impact will be on an interior supplier’s products. “Will the console shape and functionality change? You will be moving around more in the interior – what does it mean for the instrument panel if you are not always driving? You will need some sort of surface that you can use to work.” The concept vehicle will not feature an interior that turns into a bed, grins Hendriks, “but it will enable the driver to do things other than just drive. It will enable more social configurations of the seats to make interaction with other passengers easier. It will enable doing different things like working or eating in the vehicle.”
