The User-Friendly Car of Tomorrow

 

 
THE PILOT SITS DOWN in his cockpit and punches in the combination on a numerical keypad to start the engine. The seat belt automatically falls into place. The pilot feels for the control that starts his navigation system. His precise location is displayed on a screen at his fingertips.
 
He quickly plots a course on the color maps that pop up on the display screen, then switches the display from the navigation system to a monitor so he can check on various electronic functions. Seeing that all is well, he calls up detailed controls for the FM stereo radio, adjusts the bass setting and returns the display to the all-function monitor.
 
The pilot starts off, banking around a turn. Then the suspension system, alerted by its built-in radar, compensates for a pothole. (Yes, even the "pilots' who drive cars of the future will have to contend with potholes.)
 
Planners and designers for America's auto makers say all these features could be available on the typical car just five years from now.
 
U.S. auto manufacturers are independently pursuing a series of advances in technology that will virtually reinvent the car. Silicon Valley has come to Detroit. Talk of navigation systems linked electronically to satellites in space, and of seeing-eye supensions and engine compartments that will look more like the insides of computers than old-fashioned mechanical parts, has become commonplace among the engineers and designers now planning domestic cars of the early 1990s.
 
Behind all the new-age talk of microprocessors and aerodynamic bodies lies a very contemporary concern: How can Detroit iron, pulling expensive labor and old ways of doing things, zoom along with racy Japanese competitors?
 
A visitor to Detroit is struck by an atmosphere charged with conflicting emotions: An enthusiastic mood about the new cars and better ways to build them is mixed with worry about the fierce level of competition in what has become an international marketplace.
 
What will such sweeping change mean for the U.S. auto industry? "It's going to go upside down,' predicts Kenneth S. Mack, who directs longrange product strategy for the Chrysler Corporation. In the reinvented car, Mack says, the driver will continue to sit behind the wheel, but what he sees before him will be designed for greater ease of use.
 
"Ergonomics, or the personal aspects of the car, will improve,' Mack says, so that a driver can reach out and use controls in a natural way, seldom needing to shift his eyes from the road ahead. The relationship of the controls to the driver will be so important, he predicts, that the control pod will move along with the steering wheel if it is shifted to a different position. Tilt wheels are likely to be more common in the '90s.
 
Mack says the Chrysler staff feels the challenge of the future--a sense of challenge shared at Ford Motor Company and General Motors Corporation. "For the whole design staff it's the most exciting time I've ever known,' says George Moon, a GM design executive who has three decades' experience on that staff.
 
David E. Rees, a top design executive at Ford, says his company is confident that its recent aero car designs presage what autos will look like over the next several years--"we're very pleased and very bullish on our new products.'
 
"It's a different kind of era that we're entering now,' says Richard A. Teague, who is a consultant at American Motors Corporation after retiring as vice president for automotive styling. Teague says the econobox--the small, boxy car--is dead and that prospective buyers will have a greater variety of choices--from two-seaters to vans--than in the past.
 
Some controls on future dashboards will not require the driver to move his hands from the steering wheel, says Harry Mathews, manager of the manufacturing automation and engineering unit at Arthur D. Little, Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm. Voice synthesis and recognition have progressed so much that in the future a driver will be able to tell his car what to do through verbal commands such as, "Activate left directional signal.'
 
At first, each car will probably recognize the voices of only one or two masters, but eventually cars should be able to obey the voice commands of any driver --a potential boon for car-rental companies. Commands will be begun with "car' or some similar code word to catch the electronic servant's attention, Mathews says. Otherwise, a driver casually mentioning to a passenger that "we ought to go see the leaves change in Vermont' might find his car instantly plotting a course.
 
FINDING DESIRED routes will be much easier, too. Mack envisions using cassettes furnished by an auto club or oil company that would display a map on the control screen, giving the kind of information that today's trip tickets from auto clubs give in printed form.
 
General Motors has been working for several years on an even more ambitious navigation system that would have a small computer in the car's trunk to receive information from a network of navigation satellites in space, says Ronald A. Dork, a GM engineer working on the project. The car's precise location could be plotted on a display-screen map, furnished by the same kind of cassette envisioned by Chrysler planners. The driver could then use a joystick to project his intended path and use his maps to plot his course.
 
Buick is among manufacturers that have cars to demonstrate electronic controls likely to be common by the early 1990s. The Buick prototype, the Questor, has several display screens as well as a computer printer.
 
Electronics in cars will quadruple in dollar value from now to 1990 despite the rapidly declining cost of microcircuitry, predicts Ralph Colello, manager of the automotive technology unit at Arthur D. Little. "The carburetor is dead,' Colello proclaims, to be buried by electronic ignitions that need no distributor--all a part of manufacturers' determination to reduce maintenance.
 
Concern that electronics will defoliate the legions of "shade tree mechanics' is unfounded, Colello says, because "we're building a generation of people who will tinker with electronics' as earlier generations stroked engines.
 
"Downsizing' that has shrunk domestic cars since "fuel crisis' was added to the popular vocabulary appears to be at an end, says Moon of GM. "Cars aren't going to get bigger,' says Chrysler's Mack, "but the configuration of the car will be better planned for space,' so that passengers will have a greater sense of spaciousness. New manufacturing techniques are helping make this possible, says Ford's Rees.
 
Molding of materials can help reduce the depth of the car's skin that separates the exterior body from the interior. More sharply angled windshields, aimed at maintaining an aerodynamic wedge shape, will also provide more front seat room, Rees says.
 
The petroleum glut, by putting fear of shortages in the back seat, has led to an increased demand for larger cars that presents a problem for the domestic manufacturers. They like to sell high-profit large cars, but those cars lower the overall fuel economy of all the autos a company manufactures. As a result, Ford and GM have asked for a relaxation of federal fuel-economy requirements under which each U.S. company must reach a fleet average of 27.5 miles per gallon by the current model year. Without such a relaxation, the companies face stiff financial penalties. Chrysler, which has gone further in converting to smaller models, opposes such a move.
 
In contemporary models, maintenance has been a serious problem as greater reliance on advanced electronics has confounded mechanics who lack updated training. In a few years, engineers say, maintenance will be simplified because sophisticated electronic diagnostic systems will be included in all cars. It will become normal, they say, to have the control panel monitor the car's system and warn of problems in a much more detailed way than do the still-rudimentary devices in some cars today.
 
And, Mack says, mechanics in large garages like those in most dealerships will have electronic equipment they can plug into a faulty system to identify the offending circuit board or microchip, which can then be replaced. "You can almost record the birth-to-grave history of the car,' says Arthur D. Little's Mathews.
 
IN THE ever-continuing fight against weight and expensive stamping of steel, economy-conscious auto makers will rely more on "plastics,' by which they mean a wide variety of easily molded synthetic materials. Steel, though, will be in cars for a long time to come, predicts Mack, because it is able to withstand the 350 degrees to 375 degrees Fahrenheit of paint-curing ovens. Plastic bodies, like that of today's Pontiac Fiero, are expected to be reserved for low-volume models.
 
General Motors' creation of the Saturn Corporation as a new venture freed of past ways of doing things, in the hope of economically producing small cars in the United States, is one of the more dramatic recent Detroit developments. But the search for more efficient ways to make cars is universal.
 
In the past, Mack says, manufacturing processes were determined by what designers said cars would look like. Today, he says, manufacturing executives are included in initial planning so that production efficiencies are provided for in the basic design. He says the whole production cycle is being made more efficient in an effort to "put predictability into the process,' from production considerations in the basic design to the search for a balance between high-volume production of basic cars and allowing customers some selection in what goes into the car. He predicts that domestic cars will follow the imports' example of selling cars well equipped, with only a few additional options.
 
The way cars are made will change, just as the way most mass-manufactured products are made will change. Most auto people say car design by computer is still in its infancy, but to develop what Mack calls a "central core of information,' Chrysler has installed a computer system shared by the design and manufacturing staffs. "We're looking at paperless planning, vision robots and maintenance robots,' Mack says, envisioning the day when there will be fewer blue collars and more metal ones on the production floor.
 
All those robots will have a big impact on employment, the United Auto Workers union predicts. UAW researcher Peter Unterweger says the union has 630,000 members who work for auto manufacturers in the United States and Canada today (the UAW's Canadian branch plans to break away and form a separate union). "You could easily lose another 100,000 jobs by 1990'--a drop of nearly 16 percent in five years--Unterweger predicts.
 
The UAW has made job security a major priority, negotiating for retraining programs.
 
Auto manufacturers are also looking in other directions to cut production costs. "We're going to rely more on suppliers to do the engineering and testing,' Mack says. U.S. companies are moving their stamping facilities into assembly plants to reduce costs and time as they try to take advantage of techniques for economical "just in time' delivery of supplies--techniques popularized by Japanese producers.
 
ONE OF THE manufacturers' goals, Mack says, continues to be producing cars that attract young people: "The key thing is to make the guy feel good about his first car.' If he does, the reasoning goes, he will be reluctant to change brands.
 
In that buying decision, "the appearance is still going to be the key to the customer,' says GM's Moon, who adds that "shape is the significant big thing' that will be changing as cars abandon boxiness for a rounder look. Moon acknowledges that Ford has been a pioneer in rounder designs, for example with its Thunderbird and Tempo. However, Moon says that "there are different ways of doing round; our cars are going to have a character that's totally GM.' He adds, "I think the pressure for lowness is over.'
 
Interiors, Moon says, will see an integration of elements as seats look more sculpted and doors flow into the dashboard. Because electronic components are constantly being made smaller, he says, controls will be closer to the driver's hand, allowing use of a touch screen, which may include a built-in cellular telephone--something GM planners think will be a great selling point for delivery people and emergency service technicians.
 
General Motors now offers 22 lines of models and plans to increase the differentiation in appearance between cars from the various divisions, Moon says, as a way of providing a distinct image for each division: "We're trying to be more market-driven, not facility-driven,' he says. In the past, there has often been little real difference between the look of a Chevrolet and, for instance, the Pontiac version of the same model, made in the same facility.
 
Ford's Rees sounds like the designer he is when he says "our products are becoming more refined and better executed,' but in the next breath he reflects the new Detroit reality when he adds that the cars' fit and finish is now of high quality.
 
Explaining Ford's idea of the future, Rees moves his arm through the air, shaping an imaginary object much like an airplane wing. He describes cars of the 1990s whose wedge shapes are built around short hoods that slope from a low front to cut wind resistance up to a windshield whose glass follows the same plane.
 
Inside the company's design studio, concepts have taken form: models, from some made of clay to drivable ones, fill the floor. They range from early possibilities for the Aerostar van that Ford is to introduce this June to sporty station wagons and the Barchetta two-seater sports convertible designed by the Ghia studio in Turin, Italy, which Ford owns and where Rees is a vice president.
 
Near models close enough to production --meaning later in this decade-- that they are covered when a visitor enters is a wooden mockup of Probe V, successor to Ford's Probe IV, whose aerodynamic and electronic expression of the future has drawn much attention in auto shows.
 
Not all the models will lead to production cars, but they symbolize the U.S. auto industry's determination to capture the world's fancy--something that designers like Rees admit can go too far, intimidating consumers. "We have to be careful,' he says, "that we don't get carried away with pure esthetics.' After all, few auto shoppers are eager to sit down in a car and see what appears to be the cockpit of a 747. "We have to make sure that those electronics don't overwhelm the consumer,' Rees says. Some European engineers deride some Japaneses and U.S. concept cars' numerous colordisplay screens, calling them "Tokyo by night.'
 
The effort to help the driver keep his eyes on the road could lead to projected control-panel information on the windshield or on a fixed plastic screen just below the windshield, Rees says. Maybe, he says with a gleam in his eye, information will be projected in holographic images--the kind that show up out of thin air--to tell the driver how fast he is going. "Perhaps the technology doesn't support the idea yet,' Rees concedes.
 
What technology does support is a car for 1990 different from any version of the horseless carriage yet seen on American roads, as the domestic companies seek to develop crafts that will soar past the imports in the hearts of automobile "pilots' everywhere.

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