The car industry is at a once-in-a-generation crossroads thanks to autonomous driving, electric powertrains and car sharing all battling to shake up the century-old industry. Imagine the challenges facing car designers.  In such a context, perhaps it’s no surprise the world-renowned car design course at the Royal College of Art (RCA) is changing fundamentally.  In March, the first intake of students to graduate from the new ‘Intelligent Mobility’ course displayed their final-year design projects. Among the 21 projects, there were a handful of swooping dream cars, but the bulk of designs were far from conventional. Instead, there were autonomous pods inspired by art installations, an electric supercar designed to dart through Elon Musk’s Hyperloop tunnels, an amphibious machine to cope with global warming floods and a future Bentley car interior shaped around a relaxation sound system.  “Our job is twofold,” says Professor Dale Harrow, director of the Intelligent Mobility Design programme. “To give the students the kind of vocational skills to practise in the work environment, but secondly to balance that by testing students with things they will meet in the future. Things like sustainability, electric cars, autonomous driving, screen-based user interfaces and the move to a service-based ownership model. These are all challenges the students now have to prepare for.”  Harrow has been a lecturer in car design at the RCA for two decades, including five years recently as dean of the design school with fashion, research and textiles responsibility. Now he’s returned to his main passion of designing cars, putting the course back on a solid footing with a more healthy balance of funding and creativity, after a few wobbles mid-decade.  Reflecting the new direction are staff drawn from a wider context than car makers’ studios. Harrow’s deputy director is Cyril Diels, whose background includes work on driver behaviour and a bilious PhD in car sickness, while acting head of programme Dr Chris Thorpe has an MA in furniture design but is ex-Qinetiq, the defence contractor. Three permanent tutors bring studio experience from Ford, Mercedes, Opel, Volvo and VW.  Today, the staff operate out of the same warren-like building in London’s Kensington that the department has occupied for decades, but a significant expansion is coming in 2021/22 with a move to Battersea, where a new studio is being developed alongside existing RCA buildings. Symbolically, new premises will also coincide with a major new trend in car design as Harrow believes brand, which has pushed car design trends for at least 25 years, is losing its influence.  “The brand personified by form and shape, visual language and identity, I believe, is on the wane,” he says. “The challenges are the next big stages in autonomy and issues like young people not buying cars.” The RCA transformation has also been fostered by the heads of car maker design studios, who need new skills to maintain their own cutting edge. Many studio chiefs are ex-RCA and retain close links, through sponsoring students and supporting project work.  As design moves in a new direction, Harrow says there is special interest from studios for UX (user experience) interface designers, so there’s a new focus on that discipline, taught by visiting lecturer Joe Simpson.   One of the aims is to equip designers with the technical knowledge of touchscreens and programming languages so they can work with engineers to make the best of the full-width cabin displays coming to the next generation of electric and autonomous cars. “The danger is technologists push the designs and they end up being highly unusable and frustrating. Designers can demystify the use, just like Apple did in computing,” says Thorpe.  Despite the change in focus, Intelligent Mobility remains a postgraduate degree, culminating in an MA, which means most of the students are in their early to mid-twenties. Courses average around 30 students.  But a significant change is a cut from 24 months’ study to 15, by reducing holidays. As a result, total costs are down, since students spend less on pricey London digs. For UK students, the fee is £14,500, while overseas students pay £34,000. The recent trend for the bulk of scholars to come from overseas continues, with China, Korea and India well represented. There’s also growing interest from female students, who make up about 10% of the intake.  Harrow and Thorpe are also nudging the course into a new, more socially aware direction in which cars are viewed in the context of their built environment and societal use. “In the old days, you put design together with engineering and you got innovation. Dyson is an example of that: how to get a better vacuum cleaner,” says Harrow. “But now you need a social element because design sits between social and engineering. An example would be a successful design solution for London that’s not the same as one for Paris.” 
Origin: How the UK’s top car design college is readying for a new era of cars