Fast-Lane Environments : Suddenly the Sizzle Is With Car Interiors; Watch for TVs, Faxes and Sculptured Seats

Like many freeway travelers today, David Rees is noticing more and more drivers who are doing business on the move, cellular phones cradled under their chins, one hand on the steering wheel, while awkwardly trying to scribble notes with the other.

This sight not only makes Rees uncomfortable, he takes it as a mandate. “I see two messages there,” says Rees, who is director of interior design for the Ford Motor Co.

“The first is that (automobile) customers want and need a phone in these days of business. And second is that we as designers have to provide that phone for them.”

For an industry that has seemed vaguely surprised by the car phone’s hit performance since it was introduced five years ago, Rees’ preoccupation with cellular technology--in fact with car interiors in general--may come as something of a shock.

Communications Accesories

But it is grounded in the purest of motives. Not only have car phone sales zoomed past all projections (the Los Angeles area is the nation’s largest market with 200,000 cellular car phone users at last count and climbing), but portable fax machines, laptop computers, and printers also are climbing into the front seat, courtesy of the innovative auto accessory market.

How many of the nation’s 110 million commuters might want to outfit their automobile as an office? How are they going to do all this work while driving?

And, advancing the scenario to Year 2000 projections of time that will be spent on traffic-clogged freeways, what is the potential for the-automobile-as-comfortable-retreat? Specifically, will sculptured seats, TV screens, multimedia 10-speaker sound systems, remote-mounted compact disc changers, storage center armrests, power-adjustable lumbar supports, coffee-cup holders, swivel seats, flip-up tables, refrigerators and microwave ovens make gridlock more bearable?

In fact, those are only some of the creature comforts either already available somewhere in the marketplace or on the drawing boards in Southern California’s influential auto design studios.

“I think the mobile telephone is just the tip of the iceberg in what is happening to commuters,” says Ron Hill. He is chairman of the industrial design department at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design where auto industry-sponsored projects regularly preview the shape and styling of cars to come.

“It’s the entire auto interior that is being scrutinized,” continued Hill, whose students recently designed car interiors for a Nissan project based on the premise that future drivers will be spending increasing amounts of time in their cars.

To Improve Driving

“Most interiors are relatively poorly done; the seating is not ergonomically correct and . . . the actual driving of the vehicle in terms of control can be improved.

“And now,” Hill added, “the first challenge is to dial the cellular telephone without taking your eyes off the task at hand--which is to avoid hitting people and things.”

Los Angeles design consultant Charles Pelly, whose international Designworks/USA turns out leading edge work for automotive clients from General Motors, Volvo and BMW to companies in developing countries, agrees.

In Pelly’s opinion, “We’ve about reached the limits for what we can do with the exteriors (of cars) and now the manufacturers are really turning their attention to the insides. . . . There’s a lot of attention being paid to comfort, and words like visual openness are coming into play.”

This year, Pelly’s Designworks staff completed its own vision of the car-as-environment future: a show car project called the Torrero, which Pelly took this March to the International Automobile Exposition in Geneva, the “forum of futuristic cars.” The car was such a hit, he said, that at one point the fire department threatened to close the overcrowded exhibit booth.

‘Command Position’

The attraction? In part, a state-of-the-future interior with its “command position” for the driver, from which he or she can view a center-console CRT (cathode ray tube)--a small TV screen that can display the output of a satellite navigation system showing the vehicle’s location on an electronic map and providing trip guidance. Other features are controls for an on-board computer, advanced audio system and remote-mounted compact disc changer controls, as well as a fax machine and communications console armrest with telephone and note pad.

“This is a $225,000 version and you might say it’s overdone,” Pelly allowed, “but these are details the ordinary car owner might expect to see down the road.

“There are good designers and bad designers,” he added, “and the new freedom of the interiors will be abused, with people selling everything from window shades to compasses, but I have faith in the consumer to sort it out.”

Pelly’s immediate concern is the impending “electronic collision”--as telephones are added to cars already loaded with switches and buttons. “There are safety implications to all this that have to be solved,” he said. “It will take cooperation between multiple manufacturers, such as the telephone and auto designers.

“When you consider what the phone can do when integrated with the fax machine, with communication of road conditions and mapping and other functions, it is revolutionary. My premise is that the telephone will become the communication with the entire vehicle and between the vehicle and the outside world. I think by ’92 you will see a lot of integration.”

Car or Office?

It remains to be seen whether the average commuter wants a car that doubles as an office. Or whether Americans are willing to give up on the more romantic idea of the auto as last refuge from the telephone. But as the car--sprouting cellular phones, computers and command-post-type furniture--rolls into the Age of Communication, its role and what it’s going to look like have become a major focus for trend-watchers.

Bob Johnson, a consumer market analyst with Pacific Bell, pondering the implications of a computerized car, sees two emerging schools of thought: high tech and high touch.

“Some drivers are going to want a lot of sizzle,” he said. “There’s a whole group of TAFfies (Technologically Advanced Families) who are an important market segment. These are the first to embrace and adopt new technology: They were the first to buy the VCR 10 years ago, and the compact disc five years ago. They are the leading-edge consumers, and they sort of pull the rest of the market along.”

A second market segment, according to Johnson, are the drivers who, faced with longer and longer commutes, seek a home environment in their car, a “high-touch” car, filled with creature comforts.

Johnson calls it “car-cooning.” He sees “the explosion of expensive high-fidelity equipment which converts the auto to a miniature concert hall” as one indication of that impulse.

Emphasis on Comfort

Like cocooning at home, it’s “building a protective wall to lock out the stresses of everyday life, equipping it with large-scale entertainment devices and comfortable furniture,” Johnson said. “People are saying, ‘If I’m going to be stuck on the freeway, I want to be comfortable.’ ”

Conversations with Detroit industry shapers confirm Southern California predictions that the car interior is indeed considered the “next frontier”--although the major manufacturers have set somewhat different road maps to reach it.

“By the year 2000, we really will have a whole new era of car,” predicted Mark Cocroft, technical spokesman for General Motors Technical Center. “It will still have four wheels and an internal combustion engine, but that’s about the only similarity it will share with a Model T.”

General Motors traditionally has leaned toward electronic sizzle, said Cocroft, designing cars to reflect the “urbane and sophisticated world in which we live.”

In cutting-edge tradition, GM already has integrated cellular telephone functions into the CRT controls of its 1989 Buick Riviera. (The pioneering Riviera introduced the CRT in 1986.) The touch-sensitive screen, located on the dashboard and replacing rows of control buttons, calls up a menu of functions including radio controls, heating and air conditioning. The system also monitors such under-the-hood functions as temperature, oil and fuel levels, and has the potential to diagnose engine problems.

For 1990, GM’s computer technology will put a computerized Visual Information Center--a color screen with command-touch areas for its 51 functions--in the Oldsmobile Trofeo.

Said Cocroft: “The little screens in the Buick and in the Oldsmobile are the real signs of the future.”

In addition, he continued, GM has a whole team of specialists looking at ways the car, when parked, may function as an office. “Say you are in real estate, and calling on clients all the time. We are looking at designs where you flip down the back of the passenger seat. It becomes like the top of the desk for writing; you can put a fax machine there. The possibilities are almost endless in that regard.”

Focus on Driving

These functions are not to interfere with the driving, he emphasized. “We figure as you drive, the most you should be doing is talking on the phone. So that’s why we now have a hands-off phone, a remote microphone. You can just talk as you drive.”

And he reeled off a few more futuristic bells and whistles being previewed in GM concept cars, the company’s laboratory models for new ideas:

- “In a continued march toward that cockpit feel,” he said, “you’ll see individual controls for each passenger for heating, air conditioning and sound systems.”

- “We will be using solar cells to keep the temperature constant while the car is parked, so that it will stay cool in the summer, and warm in the winter.

- “You’ll be able to tint your windows with electronically activated crystals, making it all dark but still allowing complete visibility from inside out.

- “Also coming are active suspension systems: You’ll be able to punch up what kind of a ride you want--a smooth, boulevard ride, like sitting on the living room sofa, or a more firm (stiffer suspension) European ride.”

“These will be big changes,” he concluded, “but electronics make it possible.”

Another Phone

At Chrysler Corp., the sizzle is softer, with less emphasis on high-tech details, but a phone is in the future, says Trevor Creed, Chrysler’s director of design for all interiors.

“It will be integrated into the back of the sun visor. You flip the visor down and forward, without obscuring your view; the phone pad is right in front of you. It looks like a calculator with finger-sized buttons and a built-in speaker.”

The Chrysler system, which Creed said is being readied for 1990 models, “has a very, very slim phone with speaker built in and a very large memory bank.

“You program in all the numbers you are likely to use,” he explained. “You don’t have to hold anything; it comes through the radio speakers.”

Customer acceptance of the car telephone has been “absolutely amazing,” he said. “Our merchandising people thought people would be reluctant to buy a car with a built-in phone, that they would prefer to buy a phone that they could move from car to car. But there was great reception to the factory-installed phone.”

Chrysler researchers also have found, he said, that after the priorities of reliability and safety, little things mean a lot. Drivers want details such as more storage capability. “Women want somewhere to put their purse, people ask for tissue bins and trash bins, and parents want pockets in the back seat for kids’ stuff,” said Creed, who added that Chrysler first introduced a coffee cup holder in the 1984 Le Baron “and it’s amazing how popular it is. It has become a staple for our cars.

“Some of the high-tech stuff is interesting, but I think the telephone is the nearest we would get. I don’t see us adding a PC and a fax right away.”

Ford, too, is taking a hard look at the cellular phenomenon, interior designer Rees said. “As a company we have never offered a telephone that you can order with the vehicle, but now there is so much interest that we are examining the possibility. But we’re not ready to commit on anything like that.”

Looking Inside

What his designers are ready to commit on, he continued, is the interior of the car. “The focus has been traditionally on the exterior designs, and in the ‘70s and ‘80s we got into a bland, boring life style with ho-hum interiors,” said Rees, who’s coined a phrase for interiors of the ‘90s: “I call it the ‘Wow!’ factor.”

It’s not just the look of the interior, he said, it’s also the function. “The comfort level is important, the location and shape of switches, the shape of the seats, but on top of that, we want what we call surprise and delight features: Little things that please you.”

Like the rest of the industry, Ford is looking at domestic cars in Japan (where new technology is traditionally tested at home before being exported) with extras such as on-board TV, satellite navigation systems, and a head-up display system. In the latter, an image of dashboard information, such as speed, is projected on the windshield in the driver’s sightline, so he or she doesn’t have to look down.

The global advent of highly computerized cars with luxurious interiors is not welcomed universally. (Grumbled one engineer: “Science and technology have advanced to the point where you can turn the car into the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, but what’s the point?”)

The Human Factors

And even as industry spokesmen wax enthusiastic, emphasizing the safety and utility of the new technology, some human factors specialists share designer Pelly’s concerns about technological “collision.”

Tom Rockwell, a consulting engineer in Columbus, Ohio, works with auto companies to determine how test drivers handle new technology such as cellular phones and navigational systems.

“My concern is how much time a driver has available for all this electronic stuff,” he explained.

His feelings are mixed: “There are some wonderful things coming out on dashboards, and commuters who spend a lot of time parked on freeways would have time for a lot of this equipment. But if you’re driving, you only have 1 1/4 seconds to attend to a display before looking back at the road.

“I see an increased visual workload. You have to be sure when you introduce something like this.”

In other quarters, environmentalists and mass transit advocates are dismayed by the emphasis on the personal car at a time when air pollution is becoming an international problem.

Still, the marketplace beckons. “As much as people have talked about other means of transportation,” Rees noted, “American people want cars. We love cars.”