Kia’s new design chief Karim Habib has suggested that the coronavirus pandemic will impact the way the South Korean car manufacturer designs cars into the future.
Since the outbreak of the virus, many car manufacturers and designers have been thinking up ways to tackle the germs and viruses that cars can be absolutely ridden with. Habib believes new materials could be used for interior surfaces in the future, and already industrial designers have been looking into virus-resisting materials, such as copper.
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“We’re going to have talks with psychologists and anthropologists to really understand how the public’s psyche is going to be in future,” Habib told Car Magazine. “There are things we’ve already been talking about: can we have anti-viral coatings in our interiors? Can you use temperature or ultraviolet light to sanitize surfaces? These are things that we will have to think about rather soon. So, yes – Covid-19 will very much influence the way we design our cars in future.”
Habib added that the coronavirus could impact the plans of many car manufacturers, including Kia, to adopt shared transportation and mobility services aimed at adapting to the travel demands of modern consumers.
“The pandemic has changed the way we live,” Habib said. “Not only over the last few months but the way we will live in the future… For the last few years we have been talking about a sharing economy, shared mobility and public transportation. We will have to see how that develops right now, because of social distancing. These new requirements will have a long-term effect on behavior. What does this mean for cars? I think we’ll have to wait and see…”
