Sam Abuelsamid 0:00 Hey everybody, Sam Abuelsamid here got a special edition of wheel bearings for you that I recorded at an event that Ford did earlier this week at the Holley offroad vehicle park in Michigan, about an hour north of Detroit. They had the new Bronco and Bronco sport as well as some vintage Broncos on hand and had a chance to talk to some of the subject matter experts. In particular, this first segment, I've got Rob Gilardi and who is the interior design manager for the bronco two door and four door and Scott Anderson who is the interior design manager for the bronco sport, talking about some of the design things that they did in these two vehicles that make them kind of unique. And then following that, we've got Donna Bell, who is the technology manager for the bronco two door or four door and Bronco sport. We'll have another regular edition of wheel bearings coming up later this week. Again, the idea behind the bring your own device or how you Rob Gelardi 1:06 architect. So we, so about three years ago today, Scott and I went out to the office. And one of the first things that we saw is, you know, everybody bringing their own devices in, and they had different ways of attaching it. No, some people were, you know, had made bars up there. Some people were like, Is it time we went, that's like something that we need to make sure that we consider and as soon as we decided that, you need to have that bring your own device area at the top of the instrument rental residential, that literally set the design for the entire interior because that meant architectural II, we couldn't have the airbag, you know, be it via top deployment, it had to be a head of the image deployment. And so once we did that, it sort of it set the design of the instrument panel, we had to make sure that it was shaped in such a way that it It allowed the airbag to come out. It set the design for, you know, when we decided we wanted to put the grab handles on, we went to a lot of different events. We went to King hammers Baja, proper takeover. sure there's another one I'm missing. And, you know, we found also that having free points of contact was necessary for higher speed off road. So when we decided to build these integrated grab handles into the instrument panel, that was the BYOD plus the airbags, but really, that's what sets up the panel. It wasn't because one day we looked at the old one and did a full sketch like Oh, that's cool. Everything was about the human centered design process the gym hackathon. And we really set up everything from functionality modularity and open air. That was that was the architecture. Sam Abuelsamid 2:50 So it's really all about figuring out what how are out the customer of this type of vehicle and he's what do they do with these vehicles and then designing To facilitate that, Rob Gelardi 3:01 exactly, yeah, we, you know that the typical you know, typical sketches that you see from automotive design studios wasn't how we started we did a lot of storyboarding you did a lot of you know these like what we have on our shirts right now these these these cartoons and trying to you know, draw how people were using a vehicle versus how we want it to quote unquote style the surface and we did that both on the drama tuned for door as well as the scoring Scott did a lot of work on the sport and you'll see a lot of evidence of that in the in the rear cargo area and in some of the other things that may be Scott Anderson 3:37 on the bronco sport. It's a it's a small SUV races difference opinion on space to kind of focus on performance. So the back end is all cargo managed through devices Wi Fi activity, kayaks, mountain bikes, and the prompt about rejuvenated pulse rack series is like a blend of inserted functional elements where all the interface goes For the user experience on the radio, the nav system will call charging happening zone outside that zone wherever he touches is comfortable itself. So it's kind of like in the front row, it's about rejuvenation and energizing for activity in the background itself. Setting up that activity getting tiedowns double tier storage LED lamps have come off the back. So we called the campsite at 10pm LED lights of fire 30 feet behind the truck. So you can see your campsite. There's hanger bars, we just instead of just putting traditional pockets into those liftgate. There's two bars that are longer than normal. So you can hang a wetsuit in camping gear, hang a lantern, dry things out after a ride and we got these cargo ducks and you could set up in the back we could separately wet stuff from the dry stuff but your sleeping bags up top. So everything in the interior you look at its form follows function again. The function will be different for sidetracker but the Broncos score About an evening activities to get you the mountain media to check out no nowhere to set up the ski wrong. So it's set up for pulling your gear that you can also drive every day. Rob Gelardi 5:14 You know, it's all about the diversity of how people how people are using a third round, isn't it? There's no silver bullet, there's no silver bullet right? So we needed to make sure that the architecture was flexible enough and modular enough accommodating one of the things we saw at the Bravo takeover was it's you know, first of all right, you are we were welcomed in All right, we're welcomed in and everybody wanted to tell us about what they did with their and so you know, we needed to make sure that that again, we have the ability for people to make their Broncos like you buy one robbing essentially combine them all but you can go and entertain and move things around. You know, things like the the fact that the you know, the the storage and that's on the doors right everybody place that you see those those interior those bright bolts which are all have the word Brock along indicate where you can remove and replace. So you can take those nets off, put something else there, you can take the graham handles off. Here's a graph you can take a console Graham handle offers a Molly's straps on the backs of the seats. We've got the swing gate on the rear to take that off, and there's these accessory mounts there. And then of course, the one that you mentioned before the rail that's up on the top of the instrument panel, we actually built access to the structure of the instrument panel. So when you bolt something up there, you're not just drilling into plastic and hoping that it stays. It's gonna hold there as you're going up and down terrain like this going over all terrain. It's going to rigidly so we're really really excited about all of the all the functionality that we've built into the design right I Scott Anderson 7:00 think it's important like pride of ownership, right? People take pride in the bronco. We want to let them express that pride to have a sense of building their own upset people get intensely loyal to the brand and they have experiences of that truck that they wouldn't have other vehicles so we want to help expand that whatever you're into, you got to place the platform Sam Abuelsamid 7:26 huge, like you know, in the sport, you got a is architected in a way that you can actually put in a rack in there and put to nothing inside completely inside the vehicle so they're not hanging out because you know people have $5,000 house Scott Anderson 7:41 they take pride in that but that's their whole beam for some people so when make sure it's protected inside the cargo bay not getting stolen and I have issues with driving down the road right so the roof is box right there's a step in the back of the roof to enable that kind of cargo and then Sam Abuelsamid 7:57 of course you know on the the four door being a to store the doors in the back of the truck, Rob Gelardi 8:02 that was a big one. That was a really big one. You know, one of the things, again, the ease of open air, right, that was something that we found that was a huge desire. And we wanted to improve upon that. So we worked really hard with the engineering team to do frameless doors, the doors when you when you take them off, they're a little bit easier to handle right, because you don't have the entire window frame going up. But that also allowed us to be able to be able to make the split decision we found in a lot of our storyboarding. And a lot of our diverse customers. They didn't want to have to make the choice of sick today for example, right? It's very cloudy. Is it going to rain? Was it going to rain yesterday? I don't know. So you might go out to the trail with the doors on and then decide okay, I want the whole open experience and be able to take the doors and be able to put them in the vehicle. So we designed the cargo area and and the support tubes and speakers and everything else to be able to enable those doors going back We designed the door so that they were able to be stacked together, we put handles on them, so you can actually grab them. So again, it was all all dictated with ease of opener. Same thing you know in terms of the the roof panels, right, the roof panels are sort of split, right, you've got the two talking about the quarter, you get the two in the middle, and you've got one over the the second row and then you've got the calf in the back so you can again, make your choices a lot easier instead of having to remove the whole thing. It just it makes it it makes it easier for you to get to the Scott Anderson 9:36 opener. I'm trying to think of one more you can choose exactly which panel comes in modularly You don't have to all be really nice. If the kids want to become they want to be opening Rob Gelardi 9:52 or if one wants to open one wants to close your eyes. It's really easy to do here thing it was really cool as I'm sure you've seen For how the mirrors right? Sam Abuelsamid 10:03 On the Rob Gelardi 10:04 soul door, first we were like, okay, so if we're gonna have mirrors, you're gonna go a little bit forward. All right, obviously the vision a little bit so that on the impact of the interior design, and impact and how long designing is integrated grab handles. But what was really cool about it is if you kind of look over the top of it, the the issue of panels has these, these square on the right, they kind of have these diagonal slices, and then the grab handles are here, what that did for us along with the opening, because it is a grab handle, so you can see through it. When the doors are off, it gives you that much better sight. Right? So all of these things ended up working together from and it wasn't an interior and exterior design team we, you know, you've seen some of the some of the imagery, you know, we did all models like what you're seeing over there, we actually mounted one of the foam models in the studio much as much as you know on a 45 degree angle. We're having fun And our designers are in there flying in and out and trying to figure out okay, if I'm like this, how do I want the park? You know, how do I want the design of this you want I'm like this, or when I'm looking this way or trying to see over something. So it was a really different the Sam Abuelsamid 11:14 sightlines are really important when you're navigating through narrow trails. Absolutely. Rob Gelardi 11:18 That's another reason why we've got the hero switches up at the top. So directly after the, the brown device area, you don't want to be going down and hunting for different switches. So we put all of those right at the top, you get a different number, depending on the series you get. But what's really cool, is we didn't miss one piece. So they're up at the top, yeah, they're gonna get dust, they might get a little bit of, you know, you know, rainwater or something like that. But there's no one right off. So everything we did from a design material standpoint, you know, shape standpoint. It was it was, again, all about those three things, functionality. nodularity opening Unknown Speaker 12:04 Yeah, thanks. Yes. Yeah, good to see you again. Sam Abuelsamid 12:08 We'll start with the tech you're gonna have sync for Unknown Speaker 12:11 Yeah. These Sam Abuelsamid 12:14 are and you're gonna over the air update capability for the whole the whole system right Unknown Speaker 12:20 over over the air. There are certain modules that will be over the air capable, specifically saying we also have the cool thing that I really like about the the new c four system is that it goes cableless. So liver for Yeah, that's right. And so you've got this. Here Unknown Speaker 12:47 are your devices so your camera, your camera and your phone, you can store there so without the cable. Now you've got access to the information on your phone without having to have a cable. Try to figure out figure That out and adventure capture. So Jim Hackett mentioned that in his opening, and so as your offer, oh, you can capture everything. And that's Sam Abuelsamid 13:09 a particularly cool feature for something like this. Because a lot of times when you're out and out about a vehicle like this, you're going to be somewhere where there's a good probability that you won't have any cell phone. Unknown Speaker 13:20 That's right. That's right. And so you can capture it. And then once you get the cell service, you can upload that photo to your foreign Sam Abuelsamid 13:28 top account or this is Unknown Speaker 13:31 Yeah, so actually, yes. Um, so and I know that with the trail maps, you can get the trail maps from four pass. Okay, so you get you can do on your computer, transform to your phone and from your phone to your vehicle. Okay, yeah. So, so yeah, so those are the cool things. The other thing that I really like about this vehicle, is that we use a for past performance. And so you can see you get we use the cameras and you can actually See under your vehicle as well as right so you can get a view of what's in front of you and then extra tires Sam Abuelsamid 14:07 okay so you've got the cameras on the mirrors and then also Unknown Speaker 14:10 down along the front that 360 to 360 degree view okay and so you can see everything around you can see where the vehicle is and Sam Abuelsamid 14:20 how close to the vehicle can cannot see or is this is this assist I was shot last year I was shown a system by a supplier that actually uses the the forward camera and basically kind of delays it a few frames. So you can almost see like through the hood of the car. Yeah. Is that what you're doing on here? No, that's what Unknown Speaker 14:42 that's exactly what we do. Take a look at the road in front of us. And to your point we can see the whatever the terrain is in front of us. Sam Abuelsamid 14:53 Yeah, cuz that's again, that's a real advantage. You know, when you're off road, you coming up to the crest of a hill on the hook pointing up, you can't see what's on the other side, you know, having that camera to give you that. Unknown Speaker 15:06 huge advantage and and also being able to see them being able to see where your tires are located, really gets gets at the point of not having to have a spotter. Sam Abuelsamid 15:17 Right. Right. So is that something that you can you can leave that view on while you're driving? Yeah, yeah. Okay, great. Unknown Speaker 15:25 So multiple features, especially with sync, natural voice capability. So instead of having to say exactly what sync wants you to say, you can say what you want to say. Right? So you got to remember all this guy. Exactly. So it's got, we've got cloud capability with sync for, for both voice and for navigation. So, so yeah, that's fantastic. Lots of great improvements. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 15:52 Thank you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai