The surprise of the new is supposed to be earth-shaking, but if you aren't going really wild, than familiar and functional is better than lightly jaw-dropping, especially when it comes to car interiors.
Maybe you open the car door, and there's a saddle. No, a suit, like in Pacific Rim or Fallout. Wait, something less Transformers; robots are so played out. How about if it's a cooktop? You control the car by boiling water. Hold up, not safe—although it would be convenient to be able to get your farfalle al dente while driving home.
Back to the saddle idea: You control it like a horse, with your legs. "Good job," my friend Emmet said. "You just invented the motorcycle." Emmet had been listening to my increasingly deranged ideas for automotive interiors for close to an hour.
View Price on AmazonLuckily, he was also enjoying an excellent Italian deli sandwich, so he was distracted and didn't immediately make a call to report a mental breakdown by the time I got to the goo-car concept, where a bioelectric gel that forms the door senses your individual electrical signature as you approach the car, assimilating you into the cabin and activating the propulsion. Suspended in clear jelly that absorbs all impacts, you direct the machine forward by simply thinking about where you want to go.
"Now that would be surprising," Emmet said. We'd been trying to guess what the interior of the new electric Ferrari Luce would look like. Ferrari, like any brand about to unveil a new product, had really been hyping up the groundbreaking nature of what it planned to show us.
But what, really, other than semi-cognizant amoebic slime, would count as revolutionary in car cabin design? It's hard to create a new tool drastically different from its predecessors that does the same job. Things look the way they look because they have functions that require a certain size or shape.
That goes double for cars, which not only need to suit our human bodies but also must meet requirements for budgets, safety, and manufacturability. Add to that the need to be recognizable enough that a driver won't get in and immediately mistake reverse for volume up. Safe usage is crucial.
I mean, what happens if you sneeze in the amoeba car? Besides a level of user-friendliness, an interior requires at least semi-available technology, which is certainly not the case with the goo car. At least not that I know of.
If I disappear after this column for accidentally guessing top-secret new research, come break me out of Area 51. After lunch, Emmet and I, and several dozen other automotive and design reporters, got to see the Luce cabin, and it was . . . fine. Nice, even.
It was pleasantly minimal, with interesting glass surfaces and caramel-colored leather seats and lovely clicky toggle switches. It was unusual enough to be, maybe, ground-footprinting design, but broken, the earth was not.
The Luce design, which felt usable in a simple, tangible way, is a nice change from the current trends of multiplex screens and carbon-fiber trim. It was engaging and tactilely appealing, as you'd expect from designers Jony Ive and Marc Newson, whose previous work together includes the Apple Watch.
It was, though, totally recognizable as an automobile interior. The surprise of the new is supposed to be earth-shaking, but the only really surprising part about the car is the idea of potential clients buying an electric Ferrari in the first place.
Source: caranddriver.com
