Once powertrain and gas tanks have been relocated out from beneath the hood, designers are free to reimagine vehicle shapes – as can be seen with some modern vehicle interiors featuring swooping displays.
VR offers a realistic simulation environment, enabling designers to interact with their creations in real-time and quickly identify any flaws, which will speed up the design process and encourage experimentation of new ideas.
Advanced Materials and Manufacturing
Automotive designers rely on advanced materials and manufacturing to craft innovative vehicle designs that set themselves apart from competitors. For instance, using advanced high strength steel (AHSS) instead of traditional steel in car bodies can make them lighter – leading to reduced fuel consumption and emissions.
Carbon fiber and aluminum materials allow designers to craft more durable yet lightweight components for vehicle designs, and help improve vehicle performance by reducing drag.
Virtual reality can streamline the design process, helping designers quickly identify flaws and improvements more efficiently than before. By working collaboratively on low-code platforms and using virtual simulations to test their ideas, designers can slash time and cost while still being able to focus on creative and technological aspects of concept design; something especially crucial in an automotive environment where even one mistake could disrupt an entire production run.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality (VR) is an immersive technology that creates an enveloping three-dimensional environment, complete with audio and haptic feedback. Accessible from various devices ranging from headsets and mobile phones.
VR can assist designers in visualizing and interacting with designs in a lifelike environment, which helps them quickly detect flaws in designs, experiment with different concepts and refine ideas faster.
VR streamlines the design process by allowing team members to collaborate remotely, increasing efficiency, reducing delay in decision-making processes and assuring all stakeholders are on board with what needs to be accomplished. VR can also be used for training purposes allowing automotive technicians to practice maintenance procedures safely in a controlled environment allowing them to build skills and knowledge which lead to increased customer satisfaction and reduced manufacturing and logistics expenses. Finally, virtual reality reduces costs by decreasing physical prototype production resulting in reduced manufacturing and logistics expenses.
Autonomous Driving
Autonomous driving is the next stage in automotive revolution and just around the corner. Some major car brands are already beginning to speak about Level 3 autonomy – meaning hands-free motorway travel for you!
Self-driving cars use sensors and software to form an internal map of their surroundings, then follow rules, navigate obstacles, and anticipate road conditions. Companies like Mobileye use data sourced from other drivers to develop dynamic maps that are constantly being updated.
At Level 5, autonomous driving removes all human intervention altogether and passengers could watch movies, work on laptops or even sleep while the vehicle drives itself – this means no geofencing restrictions and operation anywhere! But technology for mass production has yet to catch up with expectations and there’s considerable skepticism as to whether these cars work effectively in real-life settings.
Blade Runner-Inspired Aesthetics
Automakers use motor shows as a platform for automakers to showcase concept cars that may never make it to production, as well as test customer reactions to radical designs that may never go into mass production. Many technologies we now take for granted first debuted on concept vehicles before being added into many different models.
Blade Runner’s visual design has become so iconic that its style has almost universally adopted. Much of this success can be credited to visual futurist Syd Mead, whose work created its evocative futurescapes.
Mead’s dark and moody vision of Los Angeles draws upon classic hard-boiled detective themes, proto-cyberpunk aesthetics and Asian influences in its architecture – such as Tyrell Corporation headquarters with their Voight-Kampff analyzer which manipulates emotions of test subjects using technology; some scholars have noted this film’s clear critique of corporate power structures from an environmentally sustainable angle.
