From self-driving to flying cars – this is what the future of driving looks like
Car designers are the Hollywood superstars of the automotive world. Impeccably dressed and impossibly good-looking, they’re the soothsayers of the industry.
I had a day with two of them last week – first with the mercurial Renault Group design boss Laurens van den Acker, who, as well as being all of the above, gave me a secret glimpse into the future. I was sworn to secrecy, but all I can say is: you ain’t seen nothing yet!
Later that afternoon, I met Rafig Ferrag, head of creative design for Chinese brand Xpeng.
Like many in the car industry, Ferrag had worked for several other car makers before landing at Xpeng, arriving via his homeland France, where he worked for Peugeot and Citroën, and then moving on to Honda.
Ferrag was in London hosting a talk at the London Art Fair, “exploring the brand’s design journey at the intersection of art, technology, and future mobility.”
For Ferrag, as with most car designers, it’s as much about art as it is about cars. He told me: “The genesis of the design started because of drawing – a passion for drawing, a passion for art.
“Whatever can touch beauty in general – photography, paintings, sculpture, architecture, product design – things that make people dream, that look beautiful to your eyes, or that can communicate pleasure to people.”
Ferrag is bringing all of that to Xpeng’s cars. The Xpeng G6 is already on sale in the UK, a car that doesn’t exactly break new ground design-wise (though it did feature a full-width front light bar before the Tesla Model Y!) but is pleasing to the eye. The Xpeng P7+ is far prettier, while the G9 does a good job of making an SUV look attractive.
Our conversation turned to the far future and the limits of car design until we get fully autonomous vehicles.
“With an EV, you get a skateboard platform, and then we can put pretty much anything on top of it,” Ferrag said. “However, the regulations are still there – safety regulations – and these are shaping the cars today. In my opinion, as long as we don’t reach level five autonomous driving, the shapes are going to stay where they are for quite a long time.”
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Once fully autonomous cars arrive, all bets are off. “This will be the next level of creativity for designers to think of something completely different,” he said, “then the possibilities are much, much bigger.”
But it’s not just cars on the ground that Ferrag and his team have been designing. “Have you looked at our flying cars?” he asked. I had – though I admit, with a bit of a scoff.
Xpeng is already there with its offshoot brand Xpeng AeroHT, which Ferrag is also working on. “I mean, if you experience this in real life, this is already the future to me,” he told me.
“Coming from France with all those conservative thoughts and mindsets, and then going to a company like Xpeng, you design a car that flies – and then a few months later we are building prototypes that actually fly.
“To me, I completely believe this is coming. We are working on robots that behave almost like humans today. If you see it, you’d be astonished by the progress. So it’s close – actually, very, very close.”
Does that mean flying cars will replace the cars we know today? “Replaced? Probably not,” Ferrag said. “But definitely, we are living in a 3D world, and right now we are just using a 2D platform to transport ourselves.
“The 3D platform is the air, and it is still open for exploration. In my opinion, there are many things we can do with transportation, and when you add up the layers of transport, the 2D layer will naturally become less important.”
Ferrag and I have agreed to meet at the Beijing Auto Show in April, where he will show me Xpeng’s flying cars and robots in person – and perhaps our next chat will be up in the air, not on the ground.
Rest assured, I’ll give you all the details on that meeting after it’s happened.
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The article above is an excerpt from The Independent’s DriveSmart newsletter.
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