Flying R7 Design Interpretation: Revolutionary of Industrial Darwinism

The evolution of anything is consistent with Darwinianism.

Why, for a simple example: Why did the SLR camera evolve into a gopro after needing waterproof, drop-proof, and dust-proof features? You may have been able to show off that you could control both drones and gimbals, but now drones have become able to automatically track targets, and also windproof plus automatic return.

This is the Red Queen effect in biological evolution – you can only stay where you are (keep staying at the ecological niche) if you keep running (evolving).

Why after 2020, so many bright-looking smart cars suddenly erupted, this is the Cambrian phenomenon - a question that Darwin has always been confused about. Recently I saw some product pictures of the Feifan R7 exposed on the Internet. There is a great contrast with the car in people's minds at present, from the appearance to the interior, to talk about what kind of evolution the car will undergo in this era.

The evolution of car design is essentially the same as the evolution of living things.

Why is the shape of the Feifan R7 very representative of this era?

Ask this question in a different way. Do you think the evolution of cars is linear? That is, every year to launch a new model, replace some new configurations, and do some small iterations of the appearance?

Or do you think the evolution of cars is non-linear, with mutations and explosive evolutions?

BMW 3 Series...

From the birth of the car, it seems to have been like this until recently ...

Electric smart car brands are frantically impacting the traditional fuel vehicle world.

Show the details of the Flying R7 to some friends around you who don't pay attention to the car, they don't even know that the design comes from a car.

This non-linear, explosive, irreversible evolution is much like the Cambrian biological explosion—a question that once puzzled Darwin.

This sudden evolution is like the sudden growth of all single-celled organisms – eyes (sensors).

In the Cambrian period, the earth's species exploded on a large scale. The strange appearance of the creatures is amazing even to the grotesque painters. These varied evolutionary routes eventually retained only a handful of useful features, which gradually evolved into the face of today's organisms.

Haikou insects, odd shrimp, they evolved a complete brain, eyes, nerve cords, blood vessels and other soft tissue structures. The Obavin Sea Scorpion has evolved to have five eyes on its head, and its predation and escape skills are full. The focus of these biological evolutions is to grow eyes and neural networks. The biological chain thus begins to stratify—high, medium, and low-level predators.

Whether it is the evolution of organisms or the iteration of automobiles, in the final analysis, it is a process of "serving and protecting their own advantageous functions and eliminating inferior functions".

In addition to the functionality of the eye itself, its location also divides the biological hierarchy. You've heard that "the creature whose eyes grow in front is at the top of the biological chain, and the creature that grows on both sides is the middle or bottom layer." "Is that the point of view?

As the top creatures of the biological chain, what they need on a daily basis is visual depth and capture dynamic targets. With full concentration, the success rate of tracking and capturing prey will be greatly increased.

The horse's field of vision, the blind spot is only 3 °

Rabbit's field of vision

Don't be fooled by the idiom of "waiting for the rabbit", the rabbit's vision is actually very good, but there is a small blind spot in front of the head, and the extreme speed will occasionally hit the tree.

Under the principle of ensuring the priority of function according to the animal class, should the eyes be hidden or should they be shown off? So here's the problem! Have you ever wondered why the makeup focus of beautiful women is on the eyes? Eyebrow pencils, eye creams, eyelashes, beautiful pupils........

Remember that in the biography of Zhen Huan, the emperor saw Zhen Huan and said, "Her eyes are like the Pure Yuan Empress", it is the eyes! ...... According to scientists, 65 percent of the brain's energy consumption is used to process information received by the eye. The Emperor's eyes received the information from Zhen Huan's eyes and processed them by her brain, and finally she got the right to choose a mate first!

A good car design should serve the advantages and highlight it.

For car design, the car's various radars are like the eyes of a creature. After iteration, smart cars are significantly better than the previous generation in terms of sensor number and form. So why not show them while satisfying functionality? Hidden tucked away, don't you need the priority choice given by customers to build the car you built?

This also creates a clear difference in the shape design of intelligent cars and traditional fuel vehicles.

Flying R7 and fuel vehicle detail comparison chart

Intelligent cars weaken the grille, even the front face partition and the position of the main lights, enhancing the presence of sensors. So the following questions believe you already have the answer:

1. Should the sensor be hidden or revealed?

2. What if the sensor is placed in the best position of function and the shape is too conspicuous?

3. What if the sensor that needs to be placed in the geometric center obscures the axle or logo of the body?

Taking the Feifan R7 as an example, its vehicle has 33 high-performance perception hardware, distributed in the front, middle, rear and top positions of the vehicle, from the perspective of quantity and layout position, it is necessary to ensure that there is no dead end in environmental data collection. How to complete a smooth posture and good aerodynamic performance in one go with multiple hardware is a proposition for designers.

Among them, the Luminar lidar used in the Feifan R7 is placed in the highest position on the roof. In terms of appearance, the radar shell adopts a bright black, placed on the roof, the field of view is better, the detection distance is farther, and its function can be maximized.

In terms of styling, it is obvious that the designers of feifan R7 have adopted a natural wind structure, so that the lidar style and the shape design match each other, as far as possible to reduce the abruptness of the radar on the roof, and the panoramic sunroof is integrated from a distance. And not like some new energy vehicles, too strong, in order to highlight the intelligence of their own products, the car design like a hedgehog, eager to every sensor stand up! It also takes into account the cooling, sealing and noise reduction problems caused by the heat and noise of the lidar system.

In order to hide the presence of radar in the shape, traditional cars place lidar behind the front windshield. The field of view of the lidar is somewhat limited compared to the roof, and the front windshield will affect the functionality of the radar.

The Pygmium 4D imaging radar of the Feifan R7 is set up in the center of the vehicle at the front and rear bars. Placing it in this position allows for more specific detection of the shape of the obstacle and identification of the type of object. At the same time, weather and light have less impact on 4D imaging radar.

In order to hide the radar, traditional cars will place the radar in the center of the air intake under the license plate frame, as well as on the side of the body. These positions are not the geometric center of the body and are low. During driving, it will be affected by road conditions, such as flying sand and mud.

The blind spot monitoring camera of the Feifan R7 is arranged in the position of the silver decorative strip below the A-pillar. Wide field of view, while not affected by the main driver's door opening and closing.

Conventional cars will integrate all cameras into the root of the rearview mirror. Daylighting, mirrors, door angles, and visibility are not the best choices.

Similar to sensors, the integrated design of the cockpit is also the design trend of the new generation of cars to strengthen the functional technology attributes and de-traditionalize. Although there are more and more intelligent cars with screens in the car, the screen size is also getting larger and larger. But the interior evolution of intelligent cars cannot be summed up simply as the larger the size, the better. The focus of the design remains on the principle of prioritizing functionality.

Forced a screen — like an iPad pro on a large phone stand. The shape is square, and the visual effect of the entire center console is incompatible, and even the two corners below the screen will reach the knees of the front passengers.

A triple screen embedded in the center console - this screen is not so much integrated into the interior design, but rather the entire interior design is extended with the screen as the main body. Functionally, the entire screen cannot be adjusted according to the angle of the operator, and often the physical buttons are required as auxiliaries under this model.

Feifan R7 triple screen

In contrast, the design effect of two central control screens like the Feifan R7 and Mercedes-Benz EQS is relatively top-notch. Although it is still a triple screen, the 43-inch wide true color triple screen of the Feifan R7 is not only visually large, but also adopts an integrated glass encapsulation process. The process requires high environmental adaptability and ensures a stable browsing and operating experience, whether resistant to dust, high temperatures or frequent vibrations.

Will the standard of luxury be reshaped in the future?

What was luxury in the past? Simple quantity classes, such as 3 cylinders, 4 cylinders-12 cylinders, number of exhaust pipes, number of transmissions, acceleration time?

In different eras, luxury cars also have different customer understandings and characteristics of the times. Such iterations have been experienced many times in the field of mobile phones. Nokia, the former emperor of the machine, became uninhabited in 2007, and Jobs rushed into the mobile phone market with his apple iPhone, which he had carefully built for many years, and the mobile phone entered a new era.

Although luxury brands have a century-old technical endorsement, they cannot resist the torrent of the times. The "emergency U-turn" electric car and the design that has been planned for a long time are two different things, and the interior layout of traditional fuel vehicles is like the N97 and iPhone 4 of that year compared to the intelligent cars. The former is beautiful for complexity, and the latter has refined the minimalist design concept, reduced to only a home button. Although the following year Nokia also "emergency U-turn" launched the full-screen touch N8. The appearance seems to belong to the same era as the iPhone, but the system is not comparable.

With the improvement of the degree of vehicle intelligence and assisted driving, the interior design layout of the car will change dramatically. The role gap between the driver and the rider is reduced. The design of the car interior is completely biased towards the driver's side, and does not highlight the intelligence and humanization of a car. The co-driver will be the operator and enjoyer of most of the vehicle's functions other than driving. The 43-inch triple screen design of the Feifan R7 is more forward-looking in comparison.

Of course, the form of the triple screen is not the most important. Just like the Nokia N8 mentioned above, if only the form is copied and egged. Design languages can be continuously optimized as times change. But optimization is not the same as tearing it down, and when a design language is completely unnecessary, it leaves the brand blank. How far is it blank? From 2017 to 2019, before the emergence of flexible screens, who will care about the shape design of mobile phones? All phones are screens together! The focus of the triple screen is on the user experience. Among them, the more important ones are the perception and touch, which are comprehensively reflected by the selection of materials for the screen, the clarity, the sense of integration with the surrounding materials, and the UI interface design.

As mentioned above, the 43-inch triple screen of Feifan R7 adopts the integrated package of AGC Xu Glass Dragon Trace Glass, which is 6 times stronger than ordinary soda-lime glass, anti-fingerprint, anti-dazzling, and the whole is integrated. And in the selection of separate screens can also be remarkable, 15.05-inch AMOLED flexible central control screen is larger than the current IPad pro maximum size, and reached a better than the consumer-level car standard, 2.5k high resolution can be imagined its clarity, 180 ° ultra-wide viewing angle can take into account the main driver to co-driver all angles of the visual experience; the co-driver screen and instrument screen also use the 2021 iPad Pro and MacBook the same latest Mini LED screen, the color is delicate , the picture is vivid. All of these provide a full space for the interaction and visual design optimization of the vehicle-machine interface system.

The interface of the latest car engine system of a luxury brand

Feifan R7 car machine system interface

Just imagine, after a few years, how will the UI design of the vehicle and machine system change compared with the interior modeling design and materials? At present, most traditional car companies have at least 5 years behind the mobile phone for the research and development of the car machine system, and it is not a card........ Fei Fan did not agree with this, and R7 adopted a new design idea in the interface design - "Kepler style". The light perception of the interior interface changes over time, simulating sunrise and sunset on the planet Kepler. At the same time, the interface design simulates a translucent color material, and when playing music and touching the screen, the local light perception of the screen will also change. It is believed that in the future era of intelligence, the UI interface design of human-computer interaction systems will account for a large part of the total workload of interior design.

And there are some design ingenuities. The Feifan R7 uses a dark mask at the border to make a natural transition in the bright-screen HMI interface, and there is no "dividing line" between the screen and the black decorative board in the screen state. The screen can be considered as part of the interior decoration. From the visual and use experience, it can be said that it is an ultimate enjoyment.

BBA designers certainly know the trends of the future, but they can't give up the tastes of traditional users.

At the level of shape design, traditional car companies will also have a lot of constraints. For example, in the era of the internal combustion engine, the front of the long car and the rear movement of the cockpit will present a "solemn" visual effect. Similar to this proportion Even if electric vehicles are built now, the interior space layout does not require a long front, or the cockpit is moved backwards, but this posture still affects the design of luxury brands.

Even if there is no engine under the engine canopy, traditional car companies still have to consider the design lines of the historical culture and body. However, the design of the Feifan R7 can not be considered, and the downward pressure of the front and rear drag tail shape improves the aerodynamic performance of the Feifan R7, and the wind resistance coefficient is only 0.238Cd.

In addition to the role of lighting up the rear car, the tail light exists independently on the car body. Feifan R7 uses LED through the light strip, which integrates the tail light shape and the body line trend, and becomes the "decoration" after the body line meets.

What is the luxury of the future? More suitable for the scene of current people's lives.

Am I driving faster than others?

My exhaust sound is louder?

Does my engine compartment look longer?

In the era of intelligent electrification, the definition of "luxury" is changing.......

Compared with the experience at the speed level, consumers care more about the sense of atmosphere and the smoothness of life.

Interior styling & materials, panoramic sunroofs, BOSE sound, and mood lights are rapidly increasing. If every car can run fast in the future, then the mood of consumers in the car will become the focus of competition.

Frameless doors, leather seats, integrated seat adjustment keys for door panels, double insulated panoramic canopy... Feifan Automobile also has many design details worth paying attention to. Why are these details present in this car? Five years back, the practice of most car companies is to "within the cost range, try to stack up the configuration that makes the product appear high-end". This is done with a strong commercial smell, and the flashy configuration of the car is piling up more and more. Do these configuration users really need it? How to simplify the complex and achieve the user's heart? This of course requires a lot of market research or even co-creation.

And how does Fei Fan do it?

In March this year, Feifan Automobile and SAIC Innovation R&D Institute jointly established a design co-creation center. Here is a collection of SAIC Design Center and the world's top design resources, and there is a former Volkswagen CC designer, who is also the chief designer of Feifan R7 - Martin Kropp, sitting together to participate in the design of Feifan R7.

Not only that, the team can say that the concept of "co-creation" and "people-oriented" is brought to the extreme, and brand experts, technical experts and users will communicate regularly to understand the user's needs for design and configuration, and do more research and development based on the user's use scenarios. Thus finally presenting the authentic elegance, more rational functional design of the product, but also let R7 achieve an extraordinary aesthetic evolution, which is also the "not complicated, that is, extraordinary" design concept that FeiFan adheres to.

Returning to the theme, no species is eternal.

The automotive industry has entered an era of cambrian intelligent biological explosion. Feifan Automobile is the intelligent revolutionary that emerged in this historical background. Evolution is irreversible. Products that do not conform to the times, no matter how luxurious and proud you are in the past, may not be able to survive the next era.