Technological advances pose challenge for showroom staff

The rate at which a brave new world of car technology is hurtling towards us is accelerating. It means challenging times for showroom staff needing to keep constantly abreast of the latest developments, arming themselves with the expertise to guide customers through increasingly complex and unfamiliar territory.

Already there is a raft of semi-autonomous driver aids to be navigated during the familiarisation process of a new car purchase. Now we are not too far away from fully-autonomous cars arriving on the selling scene. So kinetosis is a new knowledge topic with which dealer sales personnel will soon need to familiarise themselves.

Car sickness, by another name. Plus strategies to steer around it. It’s a worry that travelling in a car propelled autonomously will increase the likelihood of making occupants nauseous, and it is one that motor manufacturers are taking seriously in the run-up to driverless cars actually arriving in our lives.

Passenger nausea is nothing new, of course. It typically tends to afflict small children travelling in the rear seats without a clear view of the road ahead, and also affects some nervy adults who would feel better behind the wheel than seated alongside an enthusiastic driver.

The difference with autonomous cars is that nobody drives, and passenger orientation may change, with some seated rearwards and everyone more inwardly-focused. Seemingly inevitably, these days, they’ll have their heads down concentrating on their mobile phones or intent on their laptops, emailing or catching up on last night’s TV.

It’s a somewhat obvious recipe for potential problems of the stomach-churning kind. Motion sickness tends to result from a disparity between what someone’s eyes are seeing, and what is being sensed by the inner ear, skin or forces being applied to the body – such as when reading in a moving car, without the orientation of observing the road ahead.

It is reckoned that between five and ten percent of the population are susceptible to car motion sickness, afflicting some 30 million people across Europe, so it’s an issue that is focusing industry minds on what to do about it. That includes the UK Autodrive project, the government-backed consortia of automotive businesses, local authorities and academic institutions dedicated to supporting the introduction of self-driving vehicles into the UK.

Jaguar Land Rover is one of the companies involved, and has had a team of engineers and cognitive psychologists working in a Future Mobility division. Claiming ‘industry-leading’ motion sickness research, JLR has amassed 15,000 miles of motion sickness data and used it to create an algorithm that generates a wellness score for each passenger.

It is now working on a system that can automatically personalise an autonomous car’s driving and cabin settings to reduce nausea risk, it says, by up to 60%. The research includes developing satellite navigation that considers the car’s speed, distance travelled, and energy forces to determine an optimum wellness route.

JLR’s Future Mobility team includes a wellness technology researcher, Spencer Salter, who says of the project: “As we move towards an autonomous future where occupants have more time to either work, read or relax on longer journeys, it’s important we develop vehicles than can adapt to reduce the effects of motion sickness in a way that’s tailored for each passenger.”

Meanwhile Citroën is taking a different, and somewhat wackier, approach to the autonomous car nausea issue. Its boffins have come up with a novel design of spectacles, claimed to be effective in eliminating motion sickness. Imaginatively named Seetroen, they could be quite a hard sell. You’d need to be a bit of an extrovert to wear them, with their bizarre quartet of white roundels edged in vivid blue.

The patented glasses have moving liquid in the rings that surround the eyes. These are designed re-set the horizon line as you move, and counteract the conflict between the senses that otherwise results from the car’s motion.

A gimmick? I was very sceptical until I tried them out on a friend who is notoriously susceptible to car sickness. Over a lengthy drive, we were both surprised by their effectiveness. The verdict: they look weird, but they weirdly work rather well.

So there will be solutions to kinetosis, and ultimately new opportunities in the options and accessories that are designed to combat it.

Sue Baker is a freelance writer and contributor to Motor Trader