How the iPhone is changing the car

It wasn't that long ago that car makers thought they were cool by making sure their cars were available with iPod connector cables -- to woo the young and the young at heart.

But the global iPod revolution is about to change car interiors in a way that no-one was expecting. And it's got nothing to do with using an iPod or even how it integrates with the car. That's old news.

The iPod's graphics have become so good and so user-friendly that car makers are now trying to emulate the iPod look in other features of the car. As touch screens become more affordable and more widely used (including in an update of the Holden Commodore in the second half of 2010) car makers have begun employing graphic designers whose job it is to make the displays look sharp.

Previously in-car graphic design was done by the car designers themselves. But now they're getting outside help. German luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz has even gone to the trouble of setting up a graphic design department at its research and development centre in California -- purely so it can hire staff from Apple and Microsoft to work on its cars.

Speaking at the Geneva motor show, Gordon Wagener, designer of the F800 concept car and the recently appointed vice president of design, Mercedes-Benz development cars, said Apple was the design benchmark for graphics.

"I have always been a big fan of Apple," says Wagener. "Apple is really the benchmark for clean design and rich, valuable graphics.

"As we see more and more screens in the interior, the graphic design will become more and more important and become more luxurious looking."

He said customers of all ages around the world have effectively learned a new language, by quickly understanding what a small simple iPod application graphic depicts.

"We must learn from this. We don't copy it of course, but we can learn from it and do it in a crisp, clean, luxury way that is easy to understand at a glance," he said.

"For the first time we at Mercedes-Benz have our own graphic design department to come up with the latest and most luxurious graphics.

"In our North American research and development operation we just opened a telematics department. And inside that division we opened a graphic design department just to get some people from Apple and Microsoft into the company, to appeal to them, so we could get new influences."

Mercedes is also trying to find a way to update its software more frequently. Cars are updated every six years or so, some phone and computer companies can update in as little as six months.

"We are always behind the rate of change of the electronics industry because cars are so complex, but with our new experts we are looking for ways to make it easier to introduce updates rather than taking three years of programming as it currently does."

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