Journal

Notes and research on where car design is going, the challenges it’s running into, and the trends worth paying attention to. Updated as I go.

July 2026

Electrification is quietly rewriting proportion rules

Losing the combustion engine doesn't just change what's under the skin, it changes what the skin is allowed to do. No mandatory grille, no transmission tunnel forcing a raised centre console, no fixed relationship between wheelbase and cabin length. Most of what still reads as “car proportion” right now is habit, not necessity.

June 2026

Autonomy is an interior problem before it's a technology problem

Every autonomous concept starts with the same question: what does the driver do with their hands. Wrong question. The real one is what happens to the front passenger seat, because that's the seat that's been a compromise since the beginning of car design, built around someone else's driving position.

May 2026

Sustainable materials are becoming a design language, not just a spec sheet

For a long time, “sustainable” meant a quiet swap: recycled polyester standing in for leather, same stitching, same colour. That's changing. Materials with a visible, honest texture, cork, reclaimed wood, mycelium-based composites, are starting to be specified because of how they look, not despite it.

April 2026

AI tools are changing how fast an idea can be tested, not what a good idea is

Vizcom and similar tools compress what used to be a day of rendering into a few minutes of iteration. That's a real shift, not a gimmick, and I use it constantly early in a project to burn through weak ideas faster.