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CAR tech: what's next for car interior design?

Your new car could soon be as thoughtful, powerful and communicative as KITT from the Knight Rider TV series. That’s the ultimate expression of the connected car, a trend which is intensifying rapidly. Over the next five years, car cockpits will be able to relay more information on bigger, multiple screens and through the windscreen, and you’ll be able to give commands far more intuitively thanks to voice recognition and gesture control software.

Who’s Where: Peter Horbury appointed Senior Vice President Design at Geely Group

Peter Horbury, presently Vice President of Design at Volvo Car Corporation, is set to join a growing roster of design directors who have relocated to China – the most recent being Gert Hildebrandt who was appointed Design Director at Chery Quantum Auto Co. (a joint venture between Chery Automobile, China's largest independent car manufacturer, and Israel Corp.) earlier this year. Horbury, who will be taking up a new position as Senior Vice President of Design at Geely Group, will be based in Sanya, in the Hainan Province of China.

Europe's road train technology ready for testing

Work is accelerating at Europe's project to let clusters of cars drive together in convoy on motorways - with no input from the driver. The so-called Sartre project today issued a new video showing how its work is developing. Ah, that'll be the Europe-wide Sartre road safety project. It stands for Safe Road Trains for the Environment and is part-funded by the European Commission.