Catalogo Experimenta 06

THE FUTURE
OF OUR CARS
edited by Centro Ricerche Fiat
The developments underway and the new technological tendencies
allow us to imagine a future in which the environment
and objects will be endowed with a certain level of
“intelligence”, that is to say the capacity to integrate with
man. The means of this interaction are still unknown. Some of
them can be evaluated only by direct experience. But before
reaching an accomplishment of the novelty it is necessary to
design it and before that still to imagine it, to know how to
“see” it and apply it to the context of the future market.
The scenes described on the following pages go in this direction
with a proposal of innovative products and services
for the individual and for companies, to increase efficiency,
facilitate sociability, improve assistance and to enhance individuality,
meanwhile favouring the competitiveness in the
challenge of the global market. For many of the solutions described
the technology is available, however a commitment
at the level of industrial innovation as well as the political
level is necessary for the development, integration and their
distribution on a wide scale.
Instead, other solutions do not yet have a technological precondition,
rather they constitute an exercise in imagination
with the aim of helping the reader to get out of the every day
obstacle and to represent a new vision of the future scenery
wings are “imagined” starting with the knowledge of the Fiat
Research Centre, from the roadmap of the information and
computer technologies and the socio-cultural and economic
scenery of the next decade. The concept of the “continued
presence” of communication and information which, like an
underlying theme, through each with different characteristics,
(to help the driver in fog, to manage the customer loyalty
of the client or to collect data to improve the product design)
represents an important shift which, apart from the technologies
available, only a cultural change can make relevant
The devices which in future we will be able to “wear” to benefit
from services, must above all be built in respect of the law
which guarantees the safety of persons, like safety systems
which assist the driver, should be immune from disturbance
and function at their best, in any traffic context..
It could be premature to imagine and design products and
services for the future when in Italy there still exist numerous
problems of a low profile from the technological point
of view, like, for example, the optimisation of the distribution
of electric energy. But the development cannot be halted
and to remain abreast of the times and win the challenge
of competition, the Italian system should be able not only
to overcome the problems related to infrastructure, but also
to create successful products and services, that improve the
quality of life.
ERGONOMICS: THE USER AT THE CENTRE OF THE
PROJECT
The success of the product increasingly depends on its capacity
to guarantee and to communicate positive quality to the
user such as usefulness, pleasantness, the ease of use and of
increasingly more valuable and technologically advanced new
functions. It is enough to think of the car: functions and level
of comfort, until a few years ago the prerogative of upper
class cars, are becoming a standard even for those that at one
time were called “economy”. Not only: the users of industrial
INDEX SCIENTIFIC STUDIES
139