Carmakers are seriously investing in imagining a car of the future that is no longer so geared to solo drivers. And a new project from designer Ideo may be the closest to finally getting people’s privacy (and sociability) concerns correct.
It places the car at the center of a new marketplace, one where owners of an autonomous vehicle can toggle between ride sharing, car sharing, and private use. Drivers can choose to ride solo or offset the cost of their car by picking up passengers or renting it to others. The passengers, too, can reduce the price of their trips by agreeing to run errands for the owner.
Ride-sharing won’t eclipse individual ownership anytime soon. That’s why studios like Ideo are imagining systems that cater to both realities. It’s reasonable to assume that design details the company describes in its project—seats that function like individual pods, storage compartments in the front and rear of the vehicle, visors that transform into projection screens—are in line with suggestions Ideo is making to clients like Ford and Lincoln. “One of the things that is going on in general in the automotive community is a new focus on the in-vehicle experience,” says Wendy Ju, executive director of interaction design research at Stanford. “This is being driven on one front from concern about Google and Apple entering the automobile space, and on another from concerns over new mobility models from Zipcar, Lyft or Uber.”
It’s hard to look at it and not wonder what happens to public transportation as it becomes easier and cheaper to ride in someone else’s car. How do you handle insurance when the average person becomes a professional driver? Will new forms of mobility change the way our cities, buildings, and parking lots are designed? Ideo’s concepts don’t solve these problems, but they present a framework that car manufacturers, policy makers, drivers, and riders can use to answer them.