The Evolution of Car Design
Car design has gone through a major evolution over the years – from a utilitarian and “functionalist” role to an increasingly personal and incarnate extension of its owner.
For mature countries, automobiles have transitioned quickly from a category of capital goods to making a fashion statement. Previously considered the height of style at one time, cars are now the preferred form of transport to which the whole of society aspires. Automotive manufacturers followed this evolution with successive breakthroughs from new production methods that transitioned from a sequential to lean manufacturing approach. Their race to win competitively from both a technical innovation and design standpoint resulted in even more safety, integration, and specificity to usage advancements.
Single-usage functional bumpers are archetype of the past. Their replacement, front-end modules, now integrate multiple functions, such as the absorption of all types of impact, better aesthetics, lighting, comfort, and safety, all while maximizing cost synergies. Thanks to their expertise and early design collaboration with car manufacturers, suppliers now propose new materials, designs, and solutions for integrated front-end modules. Today’s vehicles are all the more seductive for this!
New challenges like intensification of usage and changes in consumer responses means that design innovation must stay as closely as possible to the user’s needs. Digital mock-up technology facilitates enhanced team collaboration which allows conceptual teams to contribute symbiotically to the design process and propose pertinent innovation solutions. Assembly principles have changed, as well as the materials used. Numerical simulation provides an overview of the whole, giving a systemic understanding of production and we now talk in terms of “technical ecosystems”. Thanks to digital mock-up, the scope of work has been extended, giving even more room for new innovative proposals and new actors.
The Car of Tomorrow
If you ask me what the car of tomorrow will look like, my first and obvious response is that the next most important milestone is the realization of the connected vehicle.
The automobile was basically frozen in its old form and function. And it was a good, sustainable model until we ended up with hyper-connected agents in our pockets that provide more mobility than we ever had in our automobiles.
The traditional car won’t completely disappear. When you drive a car, you have an experience that is felt from the heart and is much more interesting than the one you have with your smartphone.
Secondly, the technology that we’re incorporating into cars will again be the best of what our industries are capable of producing, such as sensors and service applications which form part of an intelligent infrastructure – “Smart grid”, “car-bot”, “zero crash” autonomous vehicles, etc.
If you combine the revolution on sub systems on the car’s front and rear (described earlier), we will see vehicles equipped with an intelligent skin that interacts seamlessly with other vehicles and its environment. Plastic, composites and biological materials will provide incredible capabilities and deliver very sensual shape qualities, allowing for extensive creativity. The car would interactively become an extension of our persona, through an emotional and rich “experience” of services.
The Heart of Design
Let’s also suggest since modeling, assembly and transformation of matter have always been at the heart of design, the upcoming development in material sciences, the combination and application of hybrid materials and use of composites that combine technological inherent qualities and intelligent agents hold great promise. Today, composites are still perceived as replacement materials and not yet entirely recognized for their intrinsic properties.
New application processes and design approaches would allow composites to take their rightful place such as in the case of aeronautics where technology transfers were made possible. At Boeing, weaving techniques have replaced press or stamping systems. On the constraint of weight reduction and CO2 emission reduction, the world market of tomorrow is being populated essentially by made up of low-cost, small and medium-sized cars. The use of composites based on natural fibers is one of the responses to vehicle weight reduction without impacting the concept design.
It is a new space for designers to express their creativity with sustainability and responsibility of focus in mind
Design Time
Yet, the issue is still the time to market of the technology in range and cadence as well as being proposed at a decent price. Designers have a great role to play, they will have to change their design habits and the associated design to cost approach. We could observe the same effect in furniture design. By changing the design and application method directly on concept, new possibilities to use materials previously not considered or considered as “scrap” have delivered some surprising results.
Any breakthrough requires an observation of the local ecosystem in terms of resources, material or capacities. On a global scale and based on a virtual crowdsourced approach, we have a complementary and extensive use of information embedded early in the design stage. Examples include implementation of Eco design concepts that can be tested in virtual simulation and provide the capacity to deliver clean, true to material inherent qualities. This results in a new set of sustainable products and services.
