Volvo Project Mirror : A mobility ecosystem facilitating future ownership experience

How would future vehicle ownership evolve as car sharing becomes dominant in urban scenario? How may we recreate the sense of emotional attachments to personal vehicles? How can we utilize the car even when it's idle and thus making ownership more sustainable? Imagine a future model of vehicle ownership which challenges the concept of personal vehicle and its role nowadays. This project envisions such a future to inspire the people and spark discussions about the subject. The inspirations of the project is partly the development of autonomous driving technology and the heated discussion of a car sharing future that comes with it. The other part of the it comes from the idea of open source development for creating an ecosystem that facilitates itself in the long run. The author believes the answer to a changing landscape of mobility might not come from within but could be lying in another field. The author took a speculative approach to set the future scenario based on research and interviews. After carefully analysis of the information gathered, a realistic future mobility model was generated, on the base of which the story and the interior design was developed further through the common vehicle design process. The process involves collecting image boards, loops of ideation, sketching, modelling, prototyping as well as feedbacks sessions along the way. The steps were not in chronological order as the validation of the ideas requires some steps to overlap. After the final design freeze, there was also a period of time for the making of the physical model. The result is Volvo Project Mirror - an ecosystem that goes beyond mobility solutions. The main focus is the modular interior concept that’s highly customisable for reflecting personal characteristics, making sustainable incremental updates according to different needs and different stages of life, and more importantly, sharing furnitures and gears in between home space and car to maximize usage, thus blurring the line between the two