The Car Is Becoming Your Next Device. Are You Designing It On Purpose?

For a lot of tech leaders, the car is still treated as a personal expense that sits outside the digital strategy. Yet many knowledge workers spend hours each week in transit, taking calls, listening to briefings, and mentally switching between roles. In that sense, the vehicle is already a satellite workspace. The question is whether it is designed to support performance and wellbeing, or working against both.

From hardware choice to “mobility stack”

Inside the office, we obsess over hardware, software and network choices. Outside the office, many people still buy cars the old way: emotional decisions, vague budget, limited research. If you step back and look through a product lens, the car is simply another layer of the employee’s productivity stack.

A more mature approach starts with data. Instead of choosing purely on brand, teams can benchmark models on real-world running costs, reliability, and comfort, using neutral marketplaces like Autostoday. That kind of environment lets buyers compare options the way they compare laptops: by function, performance, and total cost of ownership, not only design.

Mapping use cases like a product manager

Good product teams start with user stories. The same logic applies to mobility.

For a typical tech professional, common use cases might be:

• Short urban commutes with heavy traffic and frequent calls
  
  
• Multi-hour drives between campuses or client sites
  
  
• Airport runs at irregular hours
  
  
• Ad hoc “focus drives” where podcasts or audiobooks replace a traditional meeting

Each of these has different requirements for seating, acoustics, in-car tech, and storage. When you articulate the use cases first, you stop buying for rare edge cases – the once-a-year road trip – and optimise for the daily patterns that actually affect performance and mood.

In-car UX: not just another screen

Automakers are racing to turn dashboards into smartphones on wheels. The risk is that this adds friction instead of removing it. For people who already live in digital systems all day, the car can either be a calm, clearly structured interface or a noisy notification tunnel.

Design principles that work well in software translate surprisingly cleanly:

• Fewer, clearer choices on the screen
  
  
• Reliable phone integration that “just works”
  
  
• Physical controls for critical functions like climate and volume
  
  
• Consistent behaviour between models in a corporate fleet

If you view the cabin as an interactive system, UX consistency matters as much as it does between your internal tools.

Cognitive load and the business cost of bad environments

There is growing awareness of cognitive load inside knowledge work. We measure meeting fatigue and context switching. The in-car environment is often left out, even though poorly designed cabins increase strain. Hard seats, harsh light, and constant noise all chip away at focus.

This is not a soft issue. A developer or manager who arrives at the office already exhausted from the drive is less effective. Multiply that across a whole team and the impact begins to look like a real line item, not a lifestyle complaint.

Treat light and heat as part of UX

Screen readability, eye strain, and temperature swings are design problems as much as comfort problems. Direct sun and reflective surfaces make it harder to see navigation, increase headaches, and force air conditioning to work at maximum for long periods.

Some companies are starting to view thermal and light management in vehicles the way they view lighting design in offices. They specify interior colours, glass types, and shading solutions with human performance in mind, not only aesthetics. That is where specialist services come in: they translate abstract comfort goals into concrete changes to real cars. A dedicated tint and protection studio such as Roseville Auto Tint does this work every day, turning bright, inconsistent cabins into more stable spaces where people can see, think, and work with less strain.

Mobility as part of talent and wellbeing strategy

The next wave of HR and facilities leaders are starting to connect mobility design to talent retention. For roles that require regular driving, the quality of the in-car experience can be as important as office layout or remote work policy.

Practical steps include:

• Setting minimum comfort and safety standards for any company-supported vehicle
  
  
• Offering guidance and shortlists instead of a blank cheque
  
  
• Including mobility ergonomics in wellbeing programmes
  
  
• Training managers to treat long-drive days as load, not invisible time

These are small moves, but they send a clear signal that the organisation takes the real workday seriously, not just what happens in front of a desk.

Data-driven fleet and allowance decisions

On the corporate side, a data-first approach to vehicles often reveals hidden inefficiencies. Analysing usage patterns, fuel spend, maintenance events and employee feedback can show which models quietly harm productivity and which ones support it.

Pair that internal view with external market data from neutral marketplaces, and you can redesign fleets and allowances around actual value. For some roles, that might mean smaller, well-equipped cars with strong connectivity. For others, it might mean simplifying the offer to a clear stipend plus guidance, letting employees choose within a curated list instead of a single mandated model.

The car as a competitive advantage

In a world where many tech companies now offer similar salaries, tools, and remote work options, the details of how people move between home, office and clients can set organisations apart. A car that employees genuinely like being in, that keeps them calm and capable rather than drained, becomes a quiet advantage in both performance and hiring.

The technology industry has already transformed the way we design offices, communication tools, and even meeting formats. The next frontier is the space in between – the vehicle that quietly links the rest of the system together. Treat it as part of your product thinking, not an afterthought, and you turn an old cost centre into a modern, human-centric asset.