Attending the fourth annual Automotive Industry Day in Dearborn, Mich., promised to be an informative gathering of professionals from Ford Motor Company and Dassault Systèmes. Featuring presentations and interactive discussions about the future of vehicle design and innovation, the curated event was held at the beautifully landscaped Ford Motor Company Conference and Event Center. The morning presentations ranged from a keynote speech from John Fleming, who has retired from his post as executive vice president of manufacturing at Ford Motor Company, to a fascinating presentation from Olivier Sappin, who is Dassault Systèmes' current vice president of transportation and mobility.
In the afternoon, Dassault Systèmes' 3DEXCITE showcased some interactive demonstrations that focused on “Marketing in the Age of Experience,” which included a look at how to use virtual reality for showrooms and events and configure a vehicle in 3D via some interesting customer mobile apps.
What are your thoughts on the state of connected cars in the automotive industry right now?
“It's very exciting at the moment, because automotive companies are investing in high-tech systems and engaging with a lot of companies in Silicon Valley to bring a connected experience to consumers. With the exception of Tesla, the other car companies are playing catchup, and the age of connected cars is not off in the future, in 2030, for example—it is happening now.”The 3DEXPERIENCity project “Virtual Singapore” is a collaboration between Dassault Systèmes and Singapore's government. You are creating the first “digital twin”of a city-state to provide both a real-time feedback from connected sensors, devices and vehicles and a collaboration platform in which Singaporeans can engage and plan around an evolving digital economy. As the population continues to grow, how does the future of automotive design figure into this large and ongoing project?
“The Singapore project is interesting because it might represent the future of mobility. It's not easy to see how you switch transportation models from a car for every person or family to a point where you will just use a city’s mobility services. A lot of the change will be driven by cities—a lot of cities are not like Singapore, but the challenges that Singapore is facing right now are the same as any city: traffic, pollution, infrastructure problems and so on. There may be a new position integrated into the government called a “city mobility manager” who will be responsible for looking at traffic and the environment and figuring out what is the best way for someone to travel from point A to point B.”
“When cars are becoming a connected object, you can think of a lot of new services, from car ownership to car sharing and so on. At the end of the day for us, what is important is to be able to design all of these new capabilities within new cars. If you identify a car as part of a city system, the challenge to solve is to change product development into something where engineers learn from data. When today's car companies are designing a car, they are designing it as a closed object, with the exception of Tesla, and that has to change. If you think about the car as something like a mobile phone, bugs can be a lot more serious, and data is going to play a key role. Improving the product will depend on how engineers interpret and analyze data. Singapore will be the first city where external sensors will provide data to improve the performance and design of an integrated and fully connected car.”
In your opinion, how important is it for product design teams to collaborate through virtual reality?
“If I look back a year ago, when I was wearing this kind of headset, I was sick after one minute. What the hell are you going to use such a system for? Now you can see that with the latest system of HTC, the tracking system has little to no latency—which makes you comfortable and gives you a good experience. From that moment on, you start to see that you can do a lot of new things. If you combine this new level of comfort with the possibility that everyone may have a virtual reality set at home—and the fact that these headsetsare extremely inexpensive compared to computer-aided virtual environments—you can see that virtual reality is going to be a widespread and common experience. From a data standpoint, there has been a difference in the quality of data in digital mockups for engineers, who at first are skeptical, but when allowed to use it without incurring cost, prefer to see their designs in as life-like a fashion as virtual reality allows.”
Virtual Reality For Showrooms Demonstration
After I spoke with Sappin, I got in line for the HTC Vive demonstration—which was part of the “Marketing in the Age of Experience” portion of the event. It's always funny to walk into a room where someone is literally being blinded by the digital age and shepherded around by another individual who is holding the tether like a leash—for the participant's safety as well as the continued health of the headset. This funny feeling is always countered by a desire to step into the virtual world and see what that person is experiencing. It was like waiting for a ride, while sharing someone else's virtual experience externally on a display screen.
The demo brings you to a sedentary position within a new car, and digital arrows with targets allow you to alter the virtual landscape with the microcontroller and trigger. You could change the interior of the car by selecting different portions such as the dashboard and the seats. You could also get out of the car and change the color and look of the exterior. When I did get out of the car, I naturally wanted to look around. I saw a great courtyard with rows of trees and nobody else around. It gave me a feeling of solitude and wonderment at this virtual reality I found myself in, all the while knowing that in the physical world, I appeared to others as a slow-moving and blind cyborg. But the effect is pointed, and I realized how effective this experience is as a marketing tool. For a potential consumer looking to buy and customize their own car, it gives them a level of control that is visually superior to the experience of seeing and sitting in many different versions with different exteriors and interiors. With regards to color and visual design, it is clearly superior. But it doesn't give you the feel of actually sitting in a car.
If a product design team’s engineers can use something like this HTC Vive demonstration without having to incur the cost of the headset, then I can see how they'd prefer it to a display screen, even though it is not completely necessary for design. But for experiencing a designed product and visually customizing it, an engineer could not ask for a better way to show off and have complete strangers understand their design.