IT’S not getting any simpler. My eldest child, nearly seven, asked about an odd-shaped, large piece of plastic on a table at her grandparents’ house. "That," I told her, "is a telephone."
You know, one of those things that has a wire attached to it and rings occasionally. This was very interesting to the seven-year-old, who had never seen such a thing and wandered off to discover what other historical devices might litter the home of people who grew up in the past century.
She found many other things. She found a desktop computer, the biggest thing she’d seen this side of a Mitsubishi Pajero. Downstairs, she found an enormous collection of VHS "videos" and vinyl records and a machine that might be able to play those things.
She’s growing up in a world where many things are done on an iPhone. The same is true in the world of cars.
Not too long ago most cars were cars, with an engine, four doors and a boot. Many car manufacturers made variations on this theme. Farmers could buy a Land Rover or a Landcruiser. Delivery people could buy a van. But families had a sedan.
Then something happened in the US. In the 1980s, Jeep started marketing its Cherokee at families, not only the usual collection of lumberjacks, woodsmen and creepy hicks. It was a good call, because the firm spawned the SUV revolution and families would buy a 4x4 over a sedan or station wagon.
Over 30 years, manufacturers developed myriad car niches, from full-size SUVs to small 4x4s, crossover not-4x4s to swoopy coupes and even swoopy four-door coupe SUV crossover thingamyjigs. Some still make sedans.
Choosing the kind of car you might want has become complicated and operating it is ever more complex. It wasn’t so long ago that cars had three pedals, a steering wheel, a choice of four forward gears and maybe a radio if you had something posh.
These days cars can practically drive themselves, they can find a pizza for you or avoid traffic jams. They make phone calls, download music from the internet and tell you the most fuel-efficient way home.
...
THEY have airbags for your knees and radar cruise control and can run on electricity or petrol or both. They can massage your back and will take spoken instructions — and in the BMW I’ve been driving, if I have a prang, the car will let the folk in Munich know, and they will call me to check I’m okay.
This stuff is complicated to operate. Over the years, the greatest challenge automotive interior designers have had to contend with is button proliferation, and some have had better luck than others.
About five years ago, Citroen launched the C5 into SA.
I loved it — air suspension and superbly comfortable seats made for an unusual contender in a sedan market that was dominated by poised Germans.
But, ye gods, was it a button-fest in there! The steering wheel (or at least, the centre part of it which, in a very-Citroen-kind-of-way, didn’t move with the rest of the wheel) had no less that 16 buttons, two rotating selectors and two hooter buttons too.
All of which brings me to the all-new Volvo XC90, which has just been launched in SA. There is a great deal to say about this car, about how the previous iteration soldiered on for 12 years without replacement and about how people loved it anyway.
In a world of aggressive and bling SUVs, the XC90 always carved a niche — as a solid and dependable family car, a kind of extension of the family dog.
And now, finally, they’ve replaced it. It’s the first fruit of Geely’s acquisition of Volvo from Ford, which is, let there be absolutely no doubt, an enormously big deal for both companies.
For Geely, it gives them control of a global brand and, given the failure of China to build global automotive brands as they had planned, the only Chinese example.
For Volvo, they finally get to be free, to build cars unencumbered by history or platforms or complicated business arrangements.
When did you recently hear of a relatively small car firm developing an all-new scalable platform, all-new engines and an all-new design language, all in one go?
Who would ever have the cash for such an operation? Well, Volvo has, and the first fruit of it all is the XC90. Kind of inevitably, it’s a hell of a motor car.
...
I SPENT much of the time at the launch talking to Dr Robert Broström, a PhD in industrial psychology and a senior member of the team that deals with what Volvo calls "UX", or user experience.
In other words, he’s an expert in how people and machines interact, and one of the people behind the absolutely extraordinary lack of buttons in the XC90.
In fact, there are just seven on the centre console. The rest of the car’s systems are operated by a large iPad-sized touchscreen. This does everything.
It swipes, and scrolls and zooms in and out just like your favourite tablet computer, and its menus and sub-menus have been made simple and clear.
Not only is this a real counterpoint to German luxury cars and their circular controllers, it is genuinely at least as effective.
The engines are a joy — powerful enough and notably frugal (a freeway run in the D5 two-litre diesel returned 6.3l/100km).
The interior is comfortable – the seats are something to be experienced, suffused with a sense of light, calm and careful thought.
...
IT MIGHT sound silly, all this, but there’s a real sense of generosity of spirit in this car’s design. It’s designed to relax, not excite.
It’s supposed to be simple, not too clever. It is a place of calm.
The 19-speaker stereo is simply spectacular, and you can hear absolutely everything.
Inside, there are three rows of seats if you like and with the third row folded away, an absolutely vast boot. It’s safe, of course — it has every single imaginable safety feature, including semi-autonomous features such as the one that nudges you back into your lane if you’re distracted on a freeway.
To drive it is good. The steering is light so it feels secure on the road. It’s expensive — prices start at just more than R800,000 and go deep into the millions for the plug-in hybrid model, which will come next year. The XC90’s greatest achievement is representing enormous progress without piling on complexity. It’s the best family car I’ve driven in a long time.
Volvo is showing German car makers a thing or two with its new XC90, a car unencumbered by history. Picture: BLOOMBERG/SIMON DAWSON
IT’S not getting any simpler. My eldest child, nearly seven, asked about an odd-shaped, large piece of plastic on a table at her grandparents’ house. "That," I told her, "is a telephone."
You know, one of those things that has a wire attached to it and rings occasionally. This was very interesting to the seven-year-old, who had never seen such a thing and wandered off to discover what other historical devices might litter the home of people who grew up in the past century.
She found many other things. She found a desktop computer, the biggest thing she’d seen this side of a Mitsubishi Pajero. Downstairs, she found an enormous collection of VHS "videos" and vinyl records and a machine that might be able to play those things.
She’s growing up in a world where many things are done on an iPhone. The same is true in the world of cars.
Not too long ago most cars were cars, with an engine, four doors and a boot. Many car manufacturers made variations on this theme. Farmers could buy a Land Rover or a Landcruiser. Delivery people could buy a van. But families had a sedan.
Then something happened in the US. In the 1980s, Jeep started marketing its Cherokee at families, not only the usual collection of lumberjacks, woodsmen and creepy hicks. It was a good call, because the firm spawned the SUV revolution and families would buy a 4x4 over a sedan or station wagon.
Over 30 years, manufacturers developed myriad car niches, from full-size SUVs to small 4x4s, crossover not-4x4s to swoopy coupes and even swoopy four-door coupe SUV crossover thingamyjigs. Some still make sedans.
Choosing the kind of car you might want has become complicated and operating it is ever more complex. It wasn’t so long ago that cars had three pedals, a steering wheel, a choice of four forward gears and maybe a radio if you had something posh.
These days cars can practically drive themselves, they can find a pizza for you or avoid traffic jams. They make phone calls, download music from the internet and tell you the most fuel-efficient way home.
...
THEY have airbags for your knees and radar cruise control and can run on electricity or petrol or both. They can massage your back and will take spoken instructions — and in the BMW I’ve been driving, if I have a prang, the car will let the folk in Munich know, and they will call me to check I’m okay.
This stuff is complicated to operate. Over the years, the greatest challenge automotive interior designers have had to contend with is button proliferation, and some have had better luck than others.
About five years ago, Citroen launched the C5 into SA.
I loved it — air suspension and superbly comfortable seats made for an unusual contender in a sedan market that was dominated by poised Germans.
But, ye gods, was it a button-fest in there! The steering wheel (or at least, the centre part of it which, in a very-Citroen-kind-of-way, didn’t move with the rest of the wheel) had no less that 16 buttons, two rotating selectors and two hooter buttons too.
All of which brings me to the all-new Volvo XC90, which has just been launched in SA. There is a great deal to say about this car, about how the previous iteration soldiered on for 12 years without replacement and about how people loved it anyway.
In a world of aggressive and bling SUVs, the XC90 always carved a niche — as a solid and dependable family car, a kind of extension of the family dog.
And now, finally, they’ve replaced it. It’s the first fruit of Geely’s acquisition of Volvo from Ford, which is, let there be absolutely no doubt, an enormously big deal for both companies.
For Geely, it gives them control of a global brand and, given the failure of China to build global automotive brands as they had planned, the only Chinese example.
For Volvo, they finally get to be free, to build cars unencumbered by history or platforms or complicated business arrangements.
When did you recently hear of a relatively small car firm developing an all-new scalable platform, all-new engines and an all-new design language, all in one go?
Who would ever have the cash for such an operation? Well, Volvo has, and the first fruit of it all is the XC90. Kind of inevitably, it’s a hell of a motor car.
...
I SPENT much of the time at the launch talking to Dr Robert Broström, a PhD in industrial psychology and a senior member of the team that deals with what Volvo calls "UX", or user experience.
In other words, he’s an expert in how people and machines interact, and one of the people behind the absolutely extraordinary lack of buttons in the XC90.
In fact, there are just seven on the centre console. The rest of the car’s systems are operated by a large iPad-sized touchscreen. This does everything.
It swipes, and scrolls and zooms in and out just like your favourite tablet computer, and its menus and sub-menus have been made simple and clear.
Not only is this a real counterpoint to German luxury cars and their circular controllers, it is genuinely at least as effective.
The engines are a joy — powerful enough and notably frugal (a freeway run in the D5 two-litre diesel returned 6.3l/100km).
The interior is comfortable – the seats are something to be experienced, suffused with a sense of light, calm and careful thought.
...
IT MIGHT sound silly, all this, but there’s a real sense of generosity of spirit in this car’s design. It’s designed to relax, not excite.
It’s supposed to be simple, not too clever. It is a place of calm.
The 19-speaker stereo is simply spectacular, and you can hear absolutely everything.
Inside, there are three rows of seats if you like and with the third row folded away, an absolutely vast boot. It’s safe, of course — it has every single imaginable safety feature, including semi-autonomous features such as the one that nudges you back into your lane if you’re distracted on a freeway.
To drive it is good. The steering is light so it feels secure on the road. It’s expensive — prices start at just more than R800,000 and go deep into the millions for the plug-in hybrid model, which will come next year. The XC90’s greatest achievement is representing enormous progress without piling on complexity. It’s the best family car I’ve driven in a long time.
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