Everybody may see the outside of your car, but only you have to deal with the inside of the car as you drive to and from work each and everyday. So adding specific features will allow this car to become enjoyable as well as an extension of you.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find an ugly car in any showroom these days. The exteriors are that good. It is inside today’s rides where the design story has become more critical to the success of a new vehicle in the marketplace.
The cabin is where you live. The seats must be right for comfort and safety. Sound systems must reproduce music and talk with crystal-clear precision. The technology must be useful, modern, attractive, user-friendly, well executed and most importantly, adaptable to the rapidly changing nature of consumers’ high-tech tools – particularly smartphones, but also tablets and other portable electronic devices.
“If you think about typical differentiators 30 years ago – fuel economy, quality, safety, reliability – those have largely converged,” says Reid Bigland, FCA Canada president and CEO. “Now, design and style are playing a much more prominent role.”
The best cabins have excellent but subtle detailing – wood, chrome, aluminum trim, rich stitching – and while that visual appeal is an important factor in buying decisions, today a car must have simple-to-operate Bluetooth connectivity, and it must pair deftly with your smartphone.
Your car is no longer just a tool to get you from here to there, but a full-fledged technology platform. With 2.3 billion smartphones in use globally, consumers are demanding seamless integration with their vehicles – whether it’s an Apple or an Android phone or anything else that may come into fashion during the lifetime of a vehicle.