Re*Move

Does the car industry now get it... whatever 'it' is?

The past few weeks have seen a flurry of activities by the car companies, and their design and marketing departments, to take social media to another level and exploit its potential usefulness for designing and selling future vehicles.

First came GM with its LAB. GM has been in the social media auto world for a long time, but the Lab was a new way to test the waters with some of its more 'skunkworks' projects – such as the 'bare necessity' car and truck concepts, which you can see more of here.  What's interesting is that it gives designers, who remain - to quote Roland Barthes (yet again) "unknown artists" who are creating the "gothic cathedrals of our era" a window out into the world, and respectively, one back in to them. The videos are over-produced and slightly inauthentic feeling (the hands of a slightly nervous PR team are all over them), yet the Lab presents a platform, which, outside of the razzmatazz of the auto show, might be one of the only ways for a team to test an idea, and open up a dialogue about what they're doing, outside of the company.

The power of social in this respect seems to be growing - with the web going all-a-chatter just a couple of weeks back, when GM canned a proposed SUV, apparently in part, due to adverse responses on twitter.

GM's bare necessities car, showcased with its LAB platform

Next comes Fiat, downsideupdesign drawing our attention to their 'Mio' project, which is openly 'collecting' user research via the web, as part of the early process for developing a young person’s car, which will be showcased at a forthcoming Sao Paulo auto show. The interesting bit is that Fiat is going to openly publish all of the information it collects, licensing it under creative commons. Why interesting? Because it represents a u-turn in an industry famed for its secretive research and development processes. Furthermore, it means that others can not only reference and use the research in their projects, but critique and analyse the information, and the way Fiat use and interpret it.

While at first glance what's interesting about all of this is that it simply provides greater volumes of available raw data, what'll really be interesting is following the creative process of how Fiat translates this into something physical, and - in particular - how their reading of the data differs from that of other (outside) observers.

I'll come back to that in a minute, but it's worth mentioning the third project in this arena right now, which is Audi's (facebook log in required). As part of the development process for the LA design challenge, Audi is asking users on its facebook fan page for their input to the development of its entry to this year’s competition, which sees the car design studios of Southern California competing to design a youth-orientated car for 2030. This will only exist in 2D form, and is traditionally a place where we see designers experiment with the sublime and the ridiculous. As such, this is a low-risk, semi-serious dipping of its toes into the shark-infested waters of social media for Audi. It does signal though, that crowd-sourced ideas, and social media research could play some part in future car developments and marketing campaigns.

Audi design video from its Facebook / LA design challenge page

So what? I hear you ask about all of this. Well, let’s get the positives out of the way first. The auto industry is repeatedly accused of lagging behind other sectors when it comes to getting on new bandwagons. No such worries with social media - the train has left the station, auto industry onboard (for once). Secondly, it’s one of the simplest, fastest, most high-profile ways for an industry which has been repeatedly accused of ‘not listening’ to customers, to actually engage them and show it’s interested in their view.  

The question is, does all this mean that the auto industry now ‘gets it’? Is this a way of acknowledging the development processes needs to change, that it needs to listen more, open up, and that user-based design and research has much to offer?

I’m honestly not sure. On one hand, thinking and attitudes – in some companies – is clearly changing. On the other, using social media platforms for data collection and user research is a complete no brainer – and is becoming a prerequisite of proving that you’re a contemporary company.

But the ‘is it marketing bullshit’ or ‘is it genuine new engagement’ argument actually misses the point. Because simply having conversations, running competitions, asking for input and conducting user research online is only the first stepping-stone, and arguably not the most important. What’s missing today is the bridge between talking to customers and collecting information from them, and when the designer first picks up his or her pencil in anger. At the moment, the bridge between these two places is called 'marketing', but it has oft proved inadequate at helping deliver products people want, or in helping companies successfully innovate. In my view, there’s a clear role being created, which exists between the data collection point (be that online or in the real world), and the marketing and design teams. An ‘auto analyst’ if you will – whose critical skills are three-fold

• Being able to ask the consumer the right questions in the first place
• Analysing the data, digging deeper than the raw numbers, and testing the conclusions that these new types of research – or indeed other existing methods – lead to

• Translating the findings of research and user engagement into meaningful insight, which marketing and design teams understand and can work together around.

At the moment, social media-based user research in the auto industry is in danger of just becoming 'the next big thing' - jumped on by marketing teams as something new and radical, that they’ve got to have in order to look contemporary, but which ultimately is being treating as just another marketing method. Left like this, the results of these – often worthwhile and interesting - new means of research and engagement seem destined to be the subject of the same frowning and eye-rolling from the designer, engineering and planning teams who are ultimately charged with designing the ‘fallout’, that exists in the industry today. 

Related reading:

User research on the Ford Fiesta - the view from real life Antonellas

Drew Smith on the car industry's failure to do digital

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 1st September 2009. Hat-tip to Drew Smith at Downsideupdesign for sparking the train of thought that led me to this

Images: Joe Simpson and Drew Smith talk future auto in London - June 2009 (Mark Charmer); GM bare necessities car (GM), Audi video (Audi)

User research on the Ford Fiesta: the view from some real life Antonellas

Ford is proud of the new Fiesta. It's been Europe's best selling car, pretty much every month since its launch. And having spent much of last weekend driving one, and clobbered through the 400 mile Newcastle to London journey in one, in one go - it's easy to see what all the hype is about. The car is good. It looks relatively fast, even when it's stood still. It drives like any contemporary European Ford (which is to say, extremely well), and Ford considers it good enough to be going on sale in the US next year. It's even full of so-called big car features - keyless entry, leather uphulstery, ipod integration - that sort of thing.

But back to that word 'hype'. Part of Ford's aggressive push around the new Fiesta has been to talk about the importance of utilising persona-based design techniques. A design persona is a completely fictional character, created by the marketing and design departments, to which everyone involved in the development of the car can refer. The persona 'personifies' many of the lifestyle attributes that the car's target customer would have. They behave, have the same types of job, same types of friends and like doing the same types of things that the real world customer will do. And in the case of the Fiesta, the persona's name is Antonella.

According to press quotes from Ford designer Moray Callum, who we interviewed earlier this year:

"Antonella is an attractive 28-year old woman who lives in Rome. Her life is focused on friends and fun, clubbing and parties. She is also completely imaginary. She was the guiding personality for the Ford Verve, a design study that served as the basis for the latest-generation Fiesta."

However, while Ford has been keen to play up the importance of design personae in its current processes, and especially the one behind the Fiesta, many others - including ourselves, are sceptical about their usefulness. As Ben Kraal suggested, in response to the New York Times piece on this subject:

"Are the personae the result of long study of buyers and owners, aggregates of hundreds of tiny specific observations of many real people or are they simply invented from thin air?"

He goes on to suggest that he suspects it's the later, based on the following statement, again from Callum:

"Antonella cares more about the design and function of her telephone than that of her car. Her priorities in the Fiesta are visible in the car’s central panel, where controls inspired by those of a cellphone operate the audio and air-conditioning systems. Designers working on the Fiesta referred to the shape framing the dashboard instruments as “Antonella’s glasses.”"

So when Ford lent us a Fiesta recently, we wanted to try to test this development methodology's success using some real people (among other things - watch this space for more Fiesta content). Believing that, in fact, one of the biggest 'problem areas' that exists in car design today centres around designers rarely getting to spend time with, nor being able to understand the real needs and desires of their customers, we carried out some research in the real world... which consisted of shoving a video camera in people's face, and asking them what they thought.

We don't suggest this is conclusive, nor is it particularly scientific, but this five minute video features eight young professional 25-35 year olds who live and work in London - all of whom are target market customers for the Fiesta. Specifically, we've edited this video around their views on that interior design, inspired by Antonella's phone keypad and sun glasses:

If you haven't watched the video above, then this is your 'spoiler alert' warning. The views we got were quite interesting. Specifically, boys, rather than girls, seem much more won over by the car's centre console design. And judging by our research, the women we spoke to are looking for something in a car's interior that is much more sophisticated and classy than the keypad of Antonella's (presumably now three year old) mobile phone.

Does this illustrate the pitfalls in using design personae, such as Antonella? Partially, yes. While it is easy to see the usefulness of one dreamt-up character around which everyone on the project can focus; a made up character who can't answer back is very different from real people, in the real world who have real lives. Understanding what those people want from their car, asking them the right questions, and then being able to filter the information they provide and turn it into something that they never dreamt was possible, is to me the definition of the role of a good designer.

As one of the people in the video later said, the problem with the Fiesta's interior, is that it feels like something that "was designed by a bunch of male designers, who think they know what women want in the interior of a car", and that "in three years times, it will look terribly dated". Which is a shame, because otherwise the Ford Fiesta is an (externally) good looking, grown up, but still very fun to drive small car.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 26th Auguest 2009

Disclosure: Ford is sponsoing The Movement Design Bureau's design and research work in 2009, and the Ford Fiesta was lent to us by Ford UK's press department free of charge. We have an independent brief, and are free to say what we want. If you don't think that's the case, we want to hear from you.

Silently rolling down Smith's production line, Ford's first EV is here. We drive it

It’s been a long time coming, but be in no doubt that the electric vehicle (EV) revolution is finally upon us. What makes us so sure? We’ve seen Ford’s first EV coming down a production line, and actually driven it on public roads.

While GM has long stolen headlines in the US with its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid, cross-town rival Ford now looks set to beat it to market with a humble Transit van. It might not be Aptera-sexy, but its impact on the environment – especially in cities – could be in a different league to the trailblazers currently in the market, like Tesla.

Whereas most car drivers still worry about the range limitations inherent to electric vehicles, with a van or small truck – where daily routes tend to be predictable, and well under 100 miles a day in urban settings, ‘range anxiety’ for the driver practically disappears. Ford’s move to make its first mass-market electric vehicle a van, therefore seems smart – especially as many will go into big fleets, where operators can closely monitor vehicles and provide detailed feedback on the performance of what is still quite new technology.

First Ford Transit Connect BEV (here as Tourneo - a crew version) for the US, on the ramps in Smith factory

The Transit Connect BEV as Ford calls it, goes on sale in North America in 2010, but the first vehicles to hit American shores are rolling down a production line right now - in a factory in North-East England, where they’re built by Smith Electric Vehicles. Earlier this week, Smith’s Dan Jenkins showed us the first Ford Transit Tourneo Connect BEV on the production line floor, which you can see in this video below:

Smith has a long history of building electric vehicles, with a number of big-brand customers in Europe such as Sainsbury’s (supermarket), TNT (deliveries), and TK Maxx (retail) already using its vehicles in their fleets. They’ve been converting Ford vans for some years, so the official partnership between Smith and Ford that was announced last year – which will ultimately see electric Transits being built in a factory in Kansas City, seems logical.

The real proof of the pudding is in the eating though, and having seen the first production vehicle on the factory floor (see video above), we then got to drive Smith’s demonstrator prototype, fresh from a tour where it was shown to people like Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. As you’ll see in our video (below), from the back seat, the feeling of traveling at 50 miles per hour in a vehicle with no engine noise, feels more than “a little star trek”. But the real story is that, from behind the wheel, the Transit Connect BEV drives just like a regular car or van, only one that’s much simpler to operate, and much quieter on the move. We've driven the future, and it's electric:

Check out more videos from the day we spent with Smith on our Blip TV channel - and watch this space for more blogs and videos on this subject, which we're following very closely. All Movement Design Bureau material is available for republication under a Sharealike Creative Commons 3.0 license.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on the 21st August 2009

Images - Robb Hunter

Disclosure - Ford is sponsoring The Movement Design Bureau's design and research work in 2009 - however we have an independent brief and say what we think. If you disagree, we want to hear from you. Thanks to all at Smith - and especially Dan Jenkins - for giving up their time to show us round the factory.

The last 12 months of auto design - Joe's favourite things

I returned from France a few days ago to find Robb and Mark discussing the last 12 months of cars and car design, because they were thinking about which ones ought to be entered into the upcoming Spark design Awards.

While the auto industry’s been in the doldrums for some time now, Spark Awards provides an opportune moment to take a look at some of the more interesting cars, concepts and automotive details of recent times. So without further ado, here’s a scratch list of some Simpson favourites…

BMW Gina

Designed years ago, but then dumped in a secret hanger until such time when BMW needed an on-demand concept to unveil (the opening of BMW-Welt proved to be just such an occasion), BMW’s Gina is arguably the single most innovative thing to have happened in auto design for years. As its mastermind Chris Bangle remarked at unveiling “what do we need the skin of a car for anyway? What is it made out of? Does it have to be made of metal?” Too few ‘what if’ questions are asked in the auto world, and the moments that they do happen are typically hidden from public view – as this one was for so long. But we’re glad it finally saw the light of day, and that like all the best concepts it asks more questions than it answers.

Nissan Cube

In a world where even family hatchbacks are competing to set the fastest time in the class around the Nurburgring, Nissan offers a leftfield approach. The Cube has been around in Japan for years, but now Europe and the US are getting the second generation. Why? Nissan realise that most drivers aren’t interested in the minutae of cornering finesse, or top speed; they’re interested in something that manages to provide huge utility, but have personality at the same time. The Cube has both in spades. Essentially a box-on-wheels, it features a ‘sun and moon’ set of dials, ‘curvy wave’ seating, and asymmetric styling in the shape of one side rear window turning around the corner into the rear windshield. When he had one on test recently, Michael Banovsky noted “I feel awful leaving the cube downstairs at night. He looks so sad”. It’s the kind of car that elicits such feelings. Jean Jennings, Automobile Magazine and long-time Spark friend, raved about it to us recently, too.

 

Audi LED lights

They’re by no means universally loved, nor were Audi first to introduce LED headlight technology, but through smart design strategy and brilliant detailed execution, Audi have taken ownership of the LED headlight. Subtly different on the R8, A6, A5 and A4, the wavy bands of bright white lights, piercing through the daylight when in DRL mode, are now as much an Audi identification hallmark as the shield grille and four rings - leaving you in no doubt as to just which type of car is behind you, and would like you to move over, thank you very much…

Future Influence. When Amy met Drew.

While Ford is busy designing cars (questionably) around a mythical Italian female persona called Antonella, it and other companies need to be adapting themselves to interact with another group entirely.

They may seem virtual, but they're very real, and they come with loyal, influential followers. And they don't wait to be hired - they crave to be hired and have more useful insights along the way than most who already are.

Drew Smith is one of a new generation of commentators, driving conversations online about the future. Subject experts, independent of mind and building their careers around a portfolio - of experience, opinion, connections and commissions. He edits the Downsideupdesign blog.

Amy talks to him below. Listen carefully, because he's exactly the kind of person who is starting to influence how brands are perceived, design conversations happen, and connections are forged. In the past, people either got jobs in an industry or didn't. Once they were in, they got locked behind walls for years, until they got onto a press spokesperson list. Now they can dive into and across industry projects, often hired because they've already articulated problems publicly. They can build their own unique identity, online content and networks of supporters, share their ideas and work together more easily with others than many who work in siloed departments. Many are cross-discipline, combining understanding of product, service and interactive design.

Drew is a vehicle designer and expert in making sense of the future of the autombile and car brands. Check out his views from earlier this summer on the failure of car companies to interest the 'digital generation'. It's important stuff that doesn't usually get talked about.

Drew is unique, but of course he's not - he's one of an emerging group. You might be carving out a similar purpose - in urban planning, product design, social software, interactive design, service design, environment technologies or services. The sky's the limit. If so, we'd love to get to know you.

Amy Johannigman aka @amydoesdesign interviewed @drewpasmith from The Movement Design Bureau in London. Drew was in the Australian outback, on holiday. Monday, 3 August 2009. Want to know more about Amy? Then read her views about the future of design in this piece here.

Mitch Altman on The Magic of Open Design

We've said before and we'll say again, open, networked forms of design and collaboration are going to change how we solve many problems. They'll also shape the future of our cities, towns and villages, how we work in them, the ways we move and interact in them, the vehicles we design and the way they fit together.

Some of this is about cost - build something once, openly and others can improve it. But much of it is about the culture of open source designers and problem solvers.

Here I talk with San Francisco-based virtual reality and hacker god Mitch Altman, inventor of, amongst other things TV-B-Gone, and Vinay Gupta, open source hardware guru and inventor of the Hexayurt open source refugee shelter.

I ask whether these new networks of designers – often in the form of hackers or open source communities - spend too much time focused on arguing about the need to break down existing structures. Is there more happening beyond that? What can those networks be doing now – to create real value? Do hackers and open source networks have an identity and meaning that can defined by what they are, rather than what they aren't?

I also ask whether the hacker scene has started to build its own financial infrastructure yet?

Design Museum, Butler's Wharf, London. 9 July 2009.

Posted by Mark Charmer.

Difficult is worth doing: Honda's Hybrid CR-Z is go

Honda is more than just a car company. In last month’s Automobile Magazine, Jean Jennings summarizes the countless Honda products owned by the Automobile team, saying “You’ll see from the following list that most of us feel an affinity for things powered by Honda.” While most people know Honda as a car or a bike company, you’ll also find Honda behind robots, boats, power tools, ATVs, lawnmowers, generators… the list is endless.

Britain’s favourite motoring personality – Jeremy Clarkson - is fond of reminding people that in the past 13 years, there has not been a single known failure of the Honda VTEC unit. And as far as we know, the 2.0 motor in the outgoing S2000 still (9 years after it first went on sale) produces the highest specific output per litre of any normally-aspirated engine of a car on sale in the UK today. We in the world of Re*Move have a degree of Honda affinity too. Mark’s dad drives a Jazz, and two months ago I came within a whisker of buying a new Civic Type R – before an enforced and unexpected house move gobbled up the money instead.

So while Toyota is busy getting all the green plaudits for its all-conquering Prius, its Japanese competitor is busy trying to work out how it can wean people off VTECs and make hybrids an affordable reality for the masses. Tough one. Having arguably got there first with the original Insight, Honda’s been stung by the success of the Prius, and hit back with the look-a-like Insight. It’s a look-a-like that costs around £3000 less than its Japanese counterpart though – and although the mainstreem motoring press appear to have decided it drives poorly, our week with the car suggested it was certainly no worse than the outgoing Toyota equivalent.

However, Honda knows that if it really wants to take hybrid technology mainstream – and we'll come on to the fact that it really does – it needs to appeal to a much wider audience than those who drive the Prius/Insight shape purely for its “look at me – aren’t I green” smugness badge.

Honda announced earlier this week it planned to put the CR-Z hybrid sports coupe into production

So earlier this week, Honda announced its intention to build the CR-Z. Unveiled at the Tokyo motorshow in 2007, this diminutive white coupe with the gaping beak has been Honda’s vision of how to make the hybrid appeal to people who actually like cars, which it has shown at countless motor shows over the past few years. Now it's actually going to build it, next year. And it’s part of a wider strategy by the company to hybrid-ise its line up, making sure a much higher proportion of the cars it sells in future are propelled – in-part – by batteries. Prior to the announcement on the CR-Z being made public, we sat down with John Kingston – Honda UK’s Government affairs and environment manager to get the full low down on Honda’s plans. What he has to say makes for interesting watching:

While the hybrid car is currently looked on as the automotive equivalent of mogadon, to see Honda attempt to push it into a ‘sports car’ bracket will make for interesting times. While it uses essentially the same drive-train as the distinctly unsporty Insight, Honda promises that the CR-Z will be much a more entertaining, zestful experience – one which pays worthy tribute to the revered CR-X whose styling and conception it references. Yet it's unlikely it’ll rev to 9000 rpm, and give you that adrenalin rush (and forward momentum kick) as it passes 6k, as the Type R or S2000 do today. That leads many to be cynical that this company, so famed for its engines, can make a hybrid sports car work. But we remain hopeful. In a sign that Honda still has a firm eye on making cars that are fun to drive, Takanobu Ito became the company's new CEO and President last month. Unlike so many car companies today, he does not come from the purely financial or management side of the business - he’s a chassis designer.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 16th July 2009

Images: Difficult is worth doing ad - Joseph Simpson, CR-Z Norris Wong on flickr under creative commons license.

There's a New Daddy in the Luxury Motor Market

The new Jaguar XJ, Saatchi gallery, Chelsea, London - July 10th 2009

Sticking with our Callum brothers theme today, Jaguar chose Chelsea in central London as the place to launch its new XJ last week. This big cat is what Jaguar's design boss Ian Callum calls a return to the values of Jaguar during the William Lyons era - to "produce the most exciting cars in the world". Callum, impressive and passionate, described the launch of this new car as a "tipping point for the Jaguar brand - one Britain should be proud of".

Tipping points are tricky to pinpoint and if I was asked what was tipping right now, I'd say it was luxury car sales - off a cliff. But Jaguar is buoyant and claims modest recent sales growth, while other makers universally tanked. 

But while the wealthy car buyer is feeling rather less flush, he or she now has something entirely new to angst about. Despite looking from assorted angles like a Maserati Quattroporte, an XF, a Lexus SC (ouch), a Citroen C6, Granada Scorpio, Hillman Avenger and a Morris Marina Coupe, the Jaguar XJ is a quite lovely thing. In a great BBC TV moment this April, writer Michael Smith's documentary "Me and My Car"  featured a scene where Smith sank into the passenger seat of a vintage Jag saloon and said "I'd like to get pissed in this car". Clearly Callum was listening. "People are gonna have a good time in a Jaguar" is his boast. I'd get pissed in the back of this car any day of the week.

The car's got some neat, really focused technology, too - without getting silly. As the great Jean Jennings said to us recently, "If it doesn't make me drive better, make it go away." All of the dash instruments on the XJ (the bit in front of the driver with the speedo, etc) are a screen, with the dials all digitally rendered. In demos it looked fantastic and it's a flexible place where info like where to turn left and what music is playing appears. It's also the place where prompts appear for the voice command features. This is infinitely preferable to putting that stuff in the centre console, as Joe and I had to endure recently in the nervous-breakdown-inducing Ford Sync system.

There's other cool stuff, too. A huge 'dual angle' video screen in the centre dash which can display two different images at the same time, with each appearing clearly to driver and passenger. Which is, well, just so much fun.

The body is aluminium, so is as light as its smaller, steel sister, the XF. The 3.0 V6 diesel is claimed to do more than 40 miles per gallon, gets to 60 mph in 6 seconds and emits 184 grams of CO2. Which is pretty impressive.

Jag has also focused on making the hi-fi sound really good. While recognising you will probably bring your iPod along. But it has a hard disc that rips CDs uncompressed and has a Gracenote database.

But back to those looks, which have thrown the cat amongst the pigeons. Although Jaguar has been saying for months that the new XJ was radical, no one was totally prepared for this long, fast-back look, complete with blacked-out D pillar and a rear end that marks a complete departure for Jaguar design.

Never before has an aspect of a Jaguar's design caused so much kerfuffle...

There's an old adage which says never judge a car's design purely from photos; wait until you've seen it in the flesh, and even then - make sure you see it moving, on the road, and in traffic before you make a true call on the design. This is truly a design to which this applies. I sat at the launch breakfast on Friday morning riveted to the thing rotating in front of me, trying to decide whether it was beautiful. I've concluded that the XJ is quite a looker - with much less of the heavy, lumpiness around the rear three quarters than seems in the photos and with a rear haunch that does, as Callum claims, make it very coupe-like. 

If you, too, fancy staring open mouthed at the thing revolving, you can watch this video I took. And below is a (car-nerd-level) outline by design director Ian Callum talking us through the design.

And if you still haven't made your mind up about whether that rump works or not, check out some of our detailed shots in this photoset (click anywhere on the photos to link through to the original flickr set):

Mark Charmer is a founder of The Movement Design Bureau, a think tank.

Big Brother's Little Brother

If you want to know what the future car’s going to look like, it’s worth having a chat with one of the Callum brothers. On Friday, Ian Callum unveiled Jaguar’s new XJ - which set tongues wagging around the world. But while big brother is grappling with the future of luxury cars, little brother has an even more interesting job – working out the future of mainstream, global car design. So a few weeks ago we spoke with Moray – man behind many recent Mazdas and the new Ford Taurus, and recently made executive director of Ford’s design Americas. Check the video, and then see our take on what he said below:

“What makes a car good is going to change”

Here in Europe, since the Focus I of 1998, Ford’s cars have stood out because they’re fantastic to drive. Ride and handling balance, steering feel, and control weights are all top of the class. It’s true that in the motoring press at least, a car will rarely be deemed “good” unless it drives dynamically well. But Moray believes that “the technologies that make a car good will change” - and he implies that the focus will move into vehicle interior functionality and connectivity. Today’s cars suffer from a problematic mis-match between their development lead times and the pace of technological change. Acknowledging something needs to be done about this, and tallying with what J Mays recently told us, Moray makes clear that Ford is lining up to position itself as top of the tree in this area too.

2009 Focus RS. Steers and handles like no 300bhp FWD car has any right to...

Yet while Ford rhetoric currently focuses on “Sync” and the Fiesta’s centre console (which apes the design of a mobile phone keypad), there’s clearly the potential for a car’s interior to change even more radically with implementation of touchscreens, and soft – rather than hard – ware. A radical vision might be that the vehicle interior becomes a blank, digital canvas. Removal of heavyweight hardware could reduce weight, improving overall vehicle efficiency. If interiors became endlessly reconfigurable, added to or subtracted from with software applications, then individualization and configurability increases massively - allowing users to tailor cars to their precise needs. It may sound strange, but such developments have the potential to make a vehicle more sustainable – by allowing them to be reconfigured for different drivers and usages.

As Moray suggests, what sofware based apps means is that "it doesn't mean to say you need to get a new car to get the new technology". Potentially, this means consumers get bored less quickly, and cars survive for longer. Whether a new 'model-upgrade' culture would be allowed to replace the model-change culture of today's industry, itself a product of the need to maintain mass production, is of course open to debate. But the idea of car companies making money from software services and upgrades, rather than just mechanical maintenance and vehicle sales, is fascinating.

“[Car sharing] gives us the chance to make cars more specific for specific tasks”

We know car sharing’s on the radar at Ford. Sue Cischke surprised us earlier this year when she talked about how the company had been looking at it. But if you ask car designers about such ideas, you’re often met with a blank response - the organisational structure meaning it isn’t what design departments do or think about. At first, Callum does the same, suggesting “it’s outside of the realms of the design side of things”. But as we talk more he seems interested in what the increasing popularity of models such as Zipcar might mean for future vehicle design. What excites him is the potential to design more targeted, specific (and by implication, efficient) cars – targeted at specific usages or users: “if you’re going to use one sort of car to do one sort of motoring, and another to do a different sort, you can really pinpoint the design to something that’s much more applicable to the task, but at the same time much more exciting.”

  A current Mustang Zipcar - but could car sharing allow Ford's designers to develop much more targeted, specific, efficient designs in the future?

What Ford’s designers should do next

As one of the big-name designers now brought together under the ‘One Ford’ umbrella (others that stand out are J Mays, Freeman Thomas and Martin Smith), Callum has both an enviable and unenviable task ahead of him. He’s with some of the best designers in the business, and Ford appears to be on the right track – yet the car industry is rapidly changing (just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, and hadn’t noticed). The past fifteen years have seen an unrelenting march toward ‘prestige’ and a push up market by many car makers. Everyone has chased, but few have made inroads into, the dominance of the Germans - particularly BMW and Audi. The German’s are now ‘micro-nicheing’ - creating new vehicle segments, to questionable effect. Their brand cachet means they’ve got away with it to date, but this questionable nicheing (BMW 5 series GT anyone?) is an entire world away from the sorts of really useful, targetted 'niche' cars Moray mentions which could be developed for specific usage purposes as part of larger car share schemes. Such a policy would make much more sense for a brand such as Ford to be looking at, than some of the niches the Germans are pushing. Today, having sold off its premium lines, Ford is happily 'non-premium' and is instead focusing on a series of core models, creating ‘world vehicles’ or platforms.

Such consolidation looks smart right now. It saves money, and millions of brands probably aren’t that best thing to have today (ask GM). Yet creating cars that are all things to all people – across four continents, is a tough brief. On top of this, the Blue Oval’s core areas - mainstream hatchbacks in Europe, and trucks and Mustangs in the US - are likely to come under increased competitive pressure over the coming years, of the like never seen before. So is the ‘core-line’ approach enough to keep Ford’s head above water in the mid and longer term?

Maybe. Ford has a clear strategy for now, but it needs to go further and really utilize the talents of people like Callum, especially if it’s committed to being a sustainable leader. So while BMW ruminates on Project-I, which has somehow become a “premium” urban mobility solution for cities in 2014, and Toyota tinkers with the ‘I’ Series (iSwing, iReal) of personal mobility concepts chairs, there’s an opportunity for Ford to become the true world leader in the sub-car personal mobility sector. The market doesn’t exist right now, but it will – and this is what Ford needs to see. Not only does the brand carry exactly the right down-to-earth, ‘of the people’ image to suit such an area, but it would instantly give the company a jump on Toyota, positioning it close to the political decision makers and city leaders, and as the car company really thinking about a future generation’s mobility needs in the growing metropolises of the world.

Toyota's 'i' Series. Today people scoff at these vehicles, but Ford is missing a trick by not letting its designers loose on this space

We know that Ford is already looking at urban mobility issues, involved in research at places like MIT and Stanford, and we also know that while existing mobility projects from these teams are systematically and technically appealing and advanced, they hold little aesthetic appeal. So Ford is well placed to let its latent design talent off the leash, to allow them to define and develop a ‘Ford’ look for transportation in our 21st century cities. A Model T for the city of 2020? I’d love to see what Moray Callum thinks that would look like.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 14th July 2009

Images: Focus RS - jonanamary, Zipcar Mustang - charmermrk, Toyota i family - Jedi.RC - all under creative commons via flickr.

Disclosure: Ford is sponsoring The Movement Design Bureau's design and research work throughout 2009

Moonlighting: Joe on the CDF podcast

I was honoured to be invited on Car Design Fetish's Podcast the other day. Along with Stephen Donald, a young car designer from north east England (who we hope to bring you more on shortly and who's just secured a role with MacMotorcycles), I chatted with Dali Dimovski, Dustin Shedlarski and Arvind Ramkrishna about car design today, design education and the perception of American Automobles from 'across the pond'.

They've got an interesting concept going here - producing weekly podcasts talking about issues pertinent to the industry at the time, and interviewing designers as they go. We're number 14 in the series to date, and some of the previous episodes are very well worth checking out. You should stay tuned too, because next week they've got Drew Smith on... so expect some fireworks! Check out Stephen and I, and episode 14 of the CDF podcast here.