Self-Driving Will ‘Drastically’ Change How Cars Look, GM’s New Design Boss Says

Date August 11, 2025
Category
News
Self-Driving Will ‘Drastically’ Change How Cars Look, GM’s New Design Boss Says

It’s been said many times before that the automotive industry has reached an inflection point, but it’s not just electrification that has brought it about. Technologies don’t come about in a vacuum; they complement each other. If EVs are what the market is currently reckoning with, then just up ahead is the autonomy of our roadways. Bryan Nesbitt, General Motors‘ newly installed chief of global design, says that the latter will redefine car design.

“One of the biggest transitions in mobility is happening in this next window with autonomous driving,” Nesbitt said in a recent interview published by GM. The designer, who has replaced Michael Simcoe at the helm, referenced one particular odd way in which consumers attempted to grapple with a similar degree of change many generations ago.

“They once sold a model of a horse’s head that you could put on the front of your car, to enable the emotional transition from the horse to the automobile,” Nesbitt added. “That illustrates how this was a very dramatic transition for people.

“This next window is very significant, because this transition is going to influence our behaviors,” he continued. “That’s what good technology does. The kind of discussions that we’re having now have necessarily become much more about the total experience. No matter how advanced technology may be, for us it’s about how artfully it can it be integrated into your life.”

Buick Electra Orbit concept
The Buick Electra Orbit concept, conceived by the GM China Advanced Design Center in Shanghai. GM Design

My entire life, I’ve been seeing concept cars imagined for a world in which the act of driving was optional. They’d be long, pea pod-shaped things with movable seating often arranged in a circle, along with tables, mini-fridges to chill your drinks, and maybe even a plant or two. They’ve never seemed feasible, yet they’ve become an auto show staple for decades.

That vision of transportation is idealized at best, fanciful at worst. Even in a future where such machines are possible, who wants their everyday work commute to be a social gathering? People value solitude, too. Wrestling away control presents another stumbling block, perhaps more for us enthusiasts than others. Remove control, and you’re taking away investment. And how emotional can you be toward a vehicle you’re not invested in? For a designer—someone who works to imbue emotion in machines that are effectively appliances for a vast majority of people—that seems like a tall task.

When Nesbitt talks about human behaviors and “the total experience,” I think he’s getting at how our relationships with cars stand to change in a pretty dramatic way in, say, the next 20 years. Perhaps there’s a way that relationship can still be strong even as we relinquish control. But who knows what that looks like from where we’re standing now?

EVs, for example, have enabled the industry to break free of the packaging constraints that have defined a century of automotive design, but the cars that embody that potential are often derided as jellybeans. The public’s preferences won’t be shifted through messaging alone, even conveyed through design. The “artful integration” of technology, as GM’s new design boss puts it, is everything. Because if it doesn’t improve lives or provide some kind of obvious value, it’s going to fall flat.

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