VR—OOOM: How Virtual Reality is Set to Revolutionize the Auto Industry

 After years of speculation and fantasizing over its potential, virtual reality is finally becoming a part of everyday life, and it is set to revolutionize industries the world over, foremost amongst them the automotive sector. Major automakers are already implementing VR into each facet of their production phase, as well as their supply chain. VR is considered a ‘Holy Grail technology’, because despite how long it has taken to get out of the R&D stage, the possibilities it has offered in just about every industry one can think of remain endless.

The game changer came along when Facebook purchased the Oculus Rift headset technology, which became available for wide release just this year. Already, companies have begun making use of this groundbreaking tech, especially auto manufacturers and dealers.

Considering their place in the industry, it should come as no surprise that Ford has taken the lead in terms of how virtual reality is being implemented. They have revolutionized their development department by using VR to test scenarios and design, allowing personnel to have a hands-on experience with their products well before they end up on the assembly line.

Ford is so far ahead when it comes to VR because they have been using it, in some form, since 2000. In the last 7 years, however, Ford has made the technology a far more central component to their process. They currently have an advanced lab facility—Ford Immersion—that focuses on VR’s place in their design department. There, designers use the Oculus Rift headset to ‘experience’ the newest car model in development in a virtual space, while their coworkers and executives experience what they are seeing, in real time, via large screens onsite, as well as video conferences.

Ford uses VR to examine both the full exterior and interior of a new vehicle, honing in on particular elements in order to get a far more detailed idea of their individual components—such as size, positioning, aesthetics, and more. They use the VR tech to link directly into an Autodesk Computer Aided Design (CAD) system that makes the process much faster and more accurate. Last year alone the company examined over 135,000 individual details from nearly 200 vehicle prototypes.

Clearly VR has been working well for Ford, who plan to open new VR tech facilities in the coming months and years in Australia, China, India and Brazil, but they are hardly alone in their use of it. If Ford is ahead of the competition in regards to using virtual reality for design purposes, other companies are trying to outdo one another by using VR to optimize the customer sales experience.

Audi has been making use of the Oculus tech, as well as HTC Vive, to allow buyers to personally customize their models. They can choose color and package options, and take a virtual look inside this model in a way that was previously unavailable to them. They can even look inside the engine of the vehicle without having to pop the hood.

Toyota, meanwhile, has assembled its own 35-person VR team to develop virtual reality showrooms for customers. Infinity has struck new ad deals with the New York Times that include the implementation of VR, while Mitsubishi is set to debut a program that lets potential buyers test vehicle features on their smartphones and laptops.

88% of people say they wouldn’t buy a car without first taking it for a test drive. While VR technology still has a ways to go in terms of rendering before a VR test drive can match the real thing, these auto dealers are hoping to use what is available to lure customers—especially the coveted millennial demographic—into dealerships. These customers arrive more informed and prepared. Since they’ve already seen a detailed version of the vehicle, they are more likely to purchase if the real model matches what they’ve already seen. This makes the experience better all-around, for both the customer and the salesperson.

With all of the progress it has already made across every part of manufacturing and sales, virtual reality is well on its way to becoming second-nature in its implementation, especially as the tech continues to evolve. There’s no time to check the rearview; when it comes to VR’s place in the auto industry, it’s virtual pedal to the virtual metal.