HOME AND AWAY
With autonomous cars hitting the roads soon (hopefully), it could mean that your commute – or even your road trip – will feel as though you’ve never even left your living room.
HOME, AS THE old saying goes, is where the heart is. And by ‘old saying’, we do mean old.
It’s difficult to ascertain the exact origins of the phrase, but some have attributed it to Pliny the Elder of ancient Greece, making it some 2,000 years old. A more recent (and we use that term loosely) version appears in the 1800s and it goes something along the lines of, ‘‘Tis home where e’er the heart is”.
Of course, all those utterances were mumbled long before the invention of the automobile, and while it’s difficult to verify, I’d wager that Pliny wouldn’t have reckoned with how much time we spend in cars today.
According to one study, the average American spends a total of 18 days in their cars every year. Naturally, your mileage might vary, but it’s sobering to think that out of every year, we spend half a month just riding or driving around in our cars.
But for the longest time, there hasn’t been much to do in a car. Beyond operating it, listening to the radio or making conversation with other passengers, there was a dearth of potential activity once you were ensconced in your metal cylinder.
All that changed with the advent of modern infotainment systems – now a mainstay of nearly any vehicle – making it such that you can now play videos, music and even stream media from the Internet in your car.
And while we’re just getting used to the notion of our cars being smartphones on wheels, another seismic change is about to hit us
– that of the autonomous car.
Not only will it completely change the way we use cars – in that we
It’s sobering to think that every year, we spend half a month just riding or
driving around in our cars.
probably won’t be driving them very much – it’s also set to spark an interior design revolution; one not seen since the early 1900s, when the automobile was in its infancy.
For more than 100 years, the basic interior design of a car hasn’t changed very much.
Materials, technology and safety have come a long way since then, but a space for the driver to, well, drive – with a steering wheel and pedal box, for example – has always been present. And it could be argued that everything else about a car’s interior is designed around that.
However, with a self-driving car dispensing with the need of an operator and its attendant operational trappings – along with the more compact nature of an electric drivetrain freeing up even more room – designers now have pretty much carte blanche to let their and their customers’ imaginations run riot.
Even more so now, perhaps. If you have the wherewithal, you could do up your car’s interior with a mind-boggling array of materials and colours.
“Just as interior decor can tell you about the owner’s personality… from colour, to material and individual enhancements and even sound systems,” says Arthur Willmann, managing director of Porsche Asia Pacific, “every Porsche can be personalised.”
Autonomous cars are just, then, the next logical evolution of what is already available today.
This is something that Alister Whelan, Jaguar’s creative director for interior design, agrees with. “There’s no doubt,”
he says, “that autonomous technologies can offer a lot of freedom and opportunity for car designers.
“For example, drive-by-wire connectivity or organ pedals, which pop up from the floor, could enable these controls to be folded away, which creates a huge amount of space. This gives designers a much greater opportunity to create a multifunctional area with flexible seating
– as you would change your position a lot more in an autonomous car than you would if you were driving.”
In effect, what this could mean is that the interior of your future autonomous vehicle could have more in common with your living room than with cars as we know them today.
And, for example, you only have to look to the Rolls-Royce 103EX concept car.
In typical Rolls-Royce fashion, the ultra-luxury carmaker calls its interior The Grand Sanctuary.
In the case of the aforementioned concept car, this takes the form of a silk-upholstered sofa flanked by panels dressed in rare wood and fronted by an OLED screen; although you could have the above in any material or configuration you desire. This is, after all, Rolls-Royce we’re talking about.
According to Jaguar’s Whelan, more than the freedom in design an autonomous car brings, the biggest benefit is what it can bring to its users – freeing up the most precious resource of them all: time.
“Without the constraint of driving, we have the opportunity to choose how we spend our time in our vehicles. The three things we tend to focus on when not driving are relaxing, working and sleeping. In work mode, the seating could allow you to sit more upright, with a deployable table and your emails in front of you on a screen.
“Or you could create a more relaxed, social space for entertainment, reconfiguring the seating layout to face each other – whether you’re streaming movies over a 5G network or maybe even having a meal. In sleeping mode, your posture would completely change again, using that extra space to recline and give you a very comfortable experience,” he says.
Given that modularity, it might be tempting to assume that you could redecorate the interior of your autonomous car at will; much in the same way that you might redo your living room’s decor every so often.
Not everyone, however, is quite as taken with the idea. “I would be nervous about frequently updating
“Without the constraint of driving, we have the opportunity to choose how we spend our time in our vehicles.”
the car’s physical interior. Interior harmony is something that Jaguar is famous for,” says Whelan.
He compares it to buying a luxury watch. While you could modify the strap or dial design post-purchase, the coherence of its original design is probably why you bought it. “We want to make sure that the car you purchase is beautiful in the first place so you don’t want to redecorate it later,” he says.
Away from that, for some carmakers, such as RollsRoyce, the self-driving cars and their lounge-like interiors synergise so well – what with it having built its reputation on customers being ferried from point-to-point and having every need taken care of along the way.
Furthering that is another evolution in technology, one that again works in perfect harmony with the selfdriving car: a Siri-like digital assistant that can not only perform vehicle-related tasks such as turning down the air-conditioning or setting the mood lighting, but also works as your digital butler, keeping track of your appointments or making suggestions to ease any anticipated impediments.
Rolls-Royce calls the digital assistant featured on the 103EX concept, Eleanor – after Eleanor Thornton, the model who provided the inspiration for the marque’s Spirit of Ecstasy bonnet ornament.
Jaguar has a version of that as well, with it making an appearance on its digital concept car, the Vision
Gran Turismo Coupe – a car that only exists in the
Gran Turismo video game. The British carmaker calls it KITT-E, an obvious call-out to the Leaper on its cars’ badge, and one of the “charming details and tongue-incheek references” that Whelan says it puts on its cars.
With all that talk of amazing interiors and the seamless Internet of Things connectivity that the self-driving car will bring – something Whelan calls the “home from home experience” – will the actual act of driving become as rare as the combustion engine in the future?
This might work well for some carmakers, but for some others, it runs counter to every brand value that they hold dear. Porsche is one of those brands.
“The pleasure of the driving experience is irreplaceable to Porsche drivers,” Willmann asserts.
But he does temper that somewhat by saying that autonomous driving could bring about what the German sports car manufacturer calls Intelligent Performance, in that Porsche owners could enjoy driving it when they want, or have the car take over when they don’t. In heavy traffic or during commutes, for instance.
Jaguar’s Whelan echoes this sentiment and says:
“Jaguar has a rich heritage of luxury and sporting performance. If we were to develop an autonomous vehicle, it would still have to reflect this DNA... we wouldn’t just want a lounge on wheels.”
He continues: “Jaguars have always been a driver’s car and I believe there will always be people who love to drive and will want the option to do so. The software and hardware technologies that enable autonomous driving can also be used to amplify the driving experience. For example, on a sporty Italian road, it could enable you to take the best route through the corner and tell you when to safely brake so driving actually becomes more engaging rather than routine.”
Now, that’s one use for an autonomous car we never really saw coming. But then again, not too long ago, the self-driving car was the sole preserve of the science fiction movie, as was one powered by electricity (or at least, one that had a range comparable to a combustion-engined car).
While we’re not exactly certain yet if the car of the future will be our home away from home (even though it seems that way), and therefore, where we find our hearts, perhaps there’s another old saying that would be more appropriate.
That is, “change is the only constant”.
WHAT IS THE value of a minute? In the grand scheme of things, a minute is nothing more than a fleeting 60 seconds. Yet, in dire situations, even a split second has the power to make us or break us – or save us or kill us. And in a world that is living through one of the biggest crises in history, the value of time is increasingly important. The personal and business cost of underutilised time is deemed as a tragic waste of an irretrievable resource. This belief rings especially true for Whispir, a global scale SaaS (software as a service) company dubbed as the communications expert for the modern, sophisticated world.
Whispir, at its core, is a communications workflow platform that automates interactions between businesses and people. Appreciation of the value of time is one of the core fundamentals on which Whispir is built. Founded in 2001, the company helps organisations improve communications strategies, allowing stakeholders and the public to receive accurate and actionable
insights in a sensitive and timely manner. Efficiency within a business, according to Whispir, is optimised with a streamlined communications system in place. When people are genuinely engaged, value is created – and this very philosophy has brought the company to where it is today.
Finding Authenticity in Technology
“Since the onslaught of the global pandemic, many aspects of our lives have altered dramatically. What the world is witnessing right now is a collective awareness of time passing; for some, it’s remaining at home and simply watching the weeks pass, but for others, the ‘new normal’ has been a major disruption to routine and simple daily tasks,” says Andrew Fry, vice president
(Asia and global channels) of Whispir. This, combined with the stressors of digitalisation brought by the crisis, have curtailed our abilities to engage in genuine conversations with others, including organisations.
“Similarly, communicators in organisations are frustrated with software solutions that ignore a human’s fundamental need for connection,” adds Fry. “Companies simply don’t have the tools or processes they need to get things done.” But this is where Whispir comes in.
Pre-approved templated communications offer a single source of truth, ensuring that stakeholders, the media and customers are furnished not only with new data, but information they can genuinely rely on. Whispir has curated a list of templates to help businesses interact with staff, suppliers and business partners in real-time, at scale and with full audit trails. These templates adopt a simple drag and drop concept, do not require an IT manager to build or integrate and can be implemented in less than a day.
Most recently, the company has powered more than 1.5 billion interactions with over 55 million people in one year. Organisations – across insurance, logistics, retail and finance amongst other industries – that leverage on Whispir’s expertise have reportedly seen increases in engagement effectiveness by upwards of
300 per cent.
The Gift of Time
We have an innate need to connect and to be heard, but with the myriad of technologies made available to us today, it is only natural for messages to get lost in the virtual cacophony of digitalisation. Whispir silences the noise that has marred businesses’ goals by facilitating the delivery of clear and compelling messages. It helps large corporations, as well as small and medium enterprises, to eradicate communication inefficiencies and redundancies so that their staff and clients can connect in productive ways. The gift of time, in this case, is presenting people with the opportunity to engage in fruitful and meaningful conversations.
Leading the Pack
What Whispir has brought to the table is just a glimpse of what’s to come. “There’s a fourth industrial revolution on the horizon,” Fry suggests, “and we will be a meaningful part of it. We’re building the world’s best communications intelligence platform. One that will spur an evolution of communications workflow and introduce an era of behavioural communications intelligence based on indispensable datasets. What that means is that we’re bringing a sophisticated communications platform that is inclusive of everyone who seeks to engage with Whispir. We’re building genuine communications intelligence that will make it easy for everyone to master connection and engagement with people.”
“We’re building genuine communications intelligence that will make it easy for everyone to master connection and engagement with people.”
www.whispir.com.sg
NOT TOO LONG ago, Bell Helicopter announced that it delivered the 200th unit of its acclaimed 505 Jet Ranger X to an Austrian-based corporate transport operator.
The helicopter, launched in 2014, is a significant upgrade to its predecessor, the Bell 206, and it boasts increased speed, range and perhaps most importantly, decreased operational costs.
The 505 Jet Ranger X can fly at speeds of up to 125 knots, and according to a Bell spokesperson, can cruise from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur without stops. According to the same spokesperson, a 505 Jet Ranger X made the flight from Singapore to Myanmar and back, albeit with some refuelling stops along the way.
While the first test unit has just arrived, there are unfortunately no Bell Jet Ranger X units that have been sold in Singapore, although the region is home to around a fifth of the world’s total fleet.
The Bell spokesperson confirmed that there are around 40 flying around the region with uses as diverse as tourism (Cambodia, the Philippines, China), on-demand mobility (Indonesia) and even for training with the Coast Guard (Japan).
If you’re looking to take the 505 Jet Ranger X out for a joyride, you’re out of luck since there are none in private, or indeed, fleet ownership, for leasing. However, Singapore hosts a multitude of fixed-base operators in Seletar, such as WingsOverAsia, which takes care of hangaring, crews and maintenance. And with Bell’s regional headquarters also in Seletar, there’s probably never been a better time to get yourself that shiny new helicopter for a quick getaway.
www.bellflight.com
The 505 Jet Ranger X can fly at speeds of up to 125 knots, and can cruise from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur without stops.
WHILE GIGAYACHTS – A term used for yachts that are more than 90m in length – are becoming more common, Benetti still managed to make headlines with its launches last year. Not only did the Italian shipbuilder construct three of these masterpieces simultaneously, it also undertook the unprecedented feat of launching them all within 100 days. One of these masterpieces is the 107.6m Luminosity.