Welcome to Must Read, where we single out the best stories from around the automotive universe and beyond. Today we have reports from The Washington Post, Hemmings and BBC.
Forget for a moment that if you're on this website you're probably really into driving, not just cars. But in our day-to-day lives, some people spend a lot of time living in their cars. That's why a really good in-car OS could change automaker loyalties into software maker loyalties.
For years, we've been hearing of all the cool technology that's going into cars, mostly in the form of infotainment and better navigation. In its search for growth markets, Silicon Valley continues to push further and further into the automobile sector, and that's changing the way we think about our cars. In the future, we could be talking about "Apple cars" and "Google cars" and "Microsoft cars" the same way we once talked about Ford, GM and the other icons of Detroit.
Alex Tremulis had the interesting fortune of working at some of the most interesting American automakers in the early-to-mid 20th century. And to work with Preston Tucker must have been something. Here's a fascinating insight into the man's work.
Reportedly without any formal design training and only a brief aerodynamics course under his belt, Tremulis began submitting unsolicited – and later, solicited – renderings of custom bodies to a Duesenberg dealership in his hometown of Chicago, a persistence that got him in the door at Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg as a draftsman for Auburn.
Back to the future: The founder of Rinspeed, which made that driverless Tesla Model S with the rearranged interior, spoke to BBC about the mental and cost hurdles self-driving cars face. But the future is still relatively close.
"I wanted to put the passenger at the centre of what is possible, not the autonomous driving technology," says Rinspeed's founder and chief executive Frank Rinderknecht.
"Travelling in a driverless car will no longer require me to stare at the road, but will let me spend my time in a more meaningful way.
"The question then arises, would I like to work, to sleep, to read, to do whatever activities you might do on a train, a plane?
"I wanted to start thinking about how autonomous cars would 'move' people, and not just in the literal sense."
Photo: Getty Images
You Could Have Rivalries With Apple Cars And Google Cars In The Future