Vehicles and Physical Spaces Will Fuse Into Immersive Lifestyles
This is part two of a series on the evolution of vehicle design. Read the first part here.
Quick recap: A few weeks ago I mentioned that there are three pretty well-documented shifts that are impacting the future of travel and transportation: mainly that things and people are becoming more digitally networked, customer expectations for tailored experiences are continuing to climb, and transport methods are becoming increasingly automated. I talked through how the first signpost of a changing vehicle “third space” experience can already be seen through the bundling and eventually the integration of transport methods.
I also think that as origins, destinations, and the methods that transport us between them become more integrated, the traditionally-clear bifurcation between journey and dwelling place becomes more opaque. So, the second signpost of a changing third-space experience I think will manifest itself in vehicles and spaces becoming more intricately woven together under the same overarching branding and experience.
We’re only scratching at initial examples of this, and they’re (as you could probably guess) extreme luxury focused. Four Seasons has branded its own private jet that will enable the brand to immerse guests in the Four Seasons experience from the airport rather than the door of the resort, moving the brand a half-step closer to owning more of their customers’ experience across vehicles and spaces. Obviously this is not an ongoing service, or maybe it is for some people, but it is exactly this type of activity where brands are starting to blend their experience componentry to get further up the totem pole of how customers dwell in both stationary and transport spaces, not just stationary resort spaces.
This fusing of places and vehicles creates very interesting implications on not only how we design vehicles and transport methods, but also who is best positioned to build the experience across both. The car companies? The mobility companies? The travel and hospitality companies?
I tend to lean towards the last option — not just because my one example above shows Four Seasons moving into this space, but because they truly are the companies that are masters of a holistic experience. They aren’t just focused on your room, they’re focused on all the spaces that you experience for the entirety of time you’re at one of their properties, and have culled an incredible talent pool that is focused solely on the holistic experience.
Of course, there is definitely room for aesthetic design cues from carmakers as well, and we’re actually starting to see carmakers move towards more lifestyle and hotel-esque experiences in some flagship stores, like this insane store that Mercedes just opened in Brisbane that is basically a luxury club.
Carmakers have a history of trying to make lifestyle brands out of their products, and besides merchandise and a few one-offs here and there where they brand an apartment building or something, there hasn’t been too much of a focus on expanding their brands into other areas of customers’ lives (and I’m not counting BMW making scooters because that’s… dumb). I believe this will likely change, and wouldn’t be surprised to see more active co-design partnerships between carmakers and hospitality and travel brands in the near future.
Regardless of who ends up pioneering the holistic experience across transport and stationary spaces, one thing is clear: the brand (or brands) and the lifestyle they curate will matter more than ever.
Consumers today don’t have the time or the energy to ensure that every consumption choice they make aligns with their personal brand. Better to subscribe to a niche (because mainstream is so…mainstream) brand that embodies the type of aspirational identity I want, and then I can rely on them to tell me everything from what type of wine glass I want (or if I even drink wine) to what interior accessories I want in my future transport pod.
So if consumers are aligning themselves with niche brands to form and curate product tastes for them, then the brand choices they make for their holistic experiences in transport and stationary spaces will matter, like, a lot.
The more time that customers spend with a brand, the more persnickety their demands will become, because the stakes are higher and they’re inundated in the experience a lot of the time. We’re approaching the too-futuristic ether with this kind of talk, but it’ll be interesting to watch how loyalties to experience brands shift as transportation evolves.
To wrap, the second hallmark of the evolution of third space (vehicle) design is in the fusing of experiences and brands between transport and stationary spaces. In essence, being able to live the Four Seasons lifestyle not just on an island for a week once a year, but from the minute you wake up to the minute you step foot in your vehicle to the minute you step foot in the office. For a customer to choose a brand or collection of brands that act as their “transport and stationary space experience” brand means the stakes will be infinitely higher on what customers will demand from this new set of brands that represent such a big portion of their personal identities.
The third signpost of the evolution of third space design branches from the second one, mainly that we’ll start (and already are) seeing consumers naturally gravitating and self-selecting aspirational lifestyles in their vehicle choices that I believe will act as a conduit into more holistic space experience brands and products in the future. More to come on that soon.
