Key takeaways: perceived quality in car design

Strategies vary from brand to brand, but perceived quality (PQ) can help to ensure a design resonates with customers as intended and as a result, boost sales. Over time, the application of solid PQ principles will build trust, respect and desire, creating the picture of a car that is class-leading, built to a high standard and ultimately safe to drive.

As CDN has learned during recent investigations – including an entire month dedicated to the topic – there is so much to cover, and uncover. To go even deeper and meet some of the industry’s brightest talents in the PQ space, we hosted a livestream with Madalina Marcu of McLaren and Corentin Cheminot of Lucid, plus special guests. Below are the key takeaways of that discussion, which opened with the question: how do you define perceived quality?

Marcu tackled this first, likening it to the seasoning that amplifies a meal from good to exceptional. Although as is highlighted later on, PQ is not something that comes in as a final flourish and is in fact a constant throughout any decent car design project.

“Perceived quality is what brings emotion to a product,” Marcu explains, and encourages the feeling that a car is of top quality and excellent value for money. Lucid’s Cheminot shares a similar view, describing it as ”the sensorial journey” a customer takes with the product.

Sight, he says, is the first parameter in many cases and is why gap and flush analysis – whether panels line up and doors shut properly, for example – is so important. Ironically, sight is ”not an emotional sense, so out job is done well when people don’t notice the work we’ve done when it comes to gap and flush.”

For Amit Sharma, one of the livestream’s special guests and head of consultancy Karigari, quite the opposite can be said of poorly executed gap and flush. It is immediately noticeable. So much, in fact, that it can stop traffic. It can lead to a perception that ”the car is not engineered well,” he explains, “and that safety is not being taken care of to a very high standard. Those kind of perceptions can be very fatal in terms of overall sales.”

Indeed, PQ is synonymous with gap and flush analysis. It is the bread and butter of the field and dominated the early segment of the livestream. Marcu likened it to “body language” where “you can just tell that something is off,” while Cheminot outlined the importance of research and collaboration.

“When you produce more and more cars, in theory you will have less time to make adjustments. A design that’s well studied in advance with the right people – the dimensional team, the engineering team, suppliers and so on – will deliver a nice unity in terms of gap and flush,” he explained. “To me, that’s a fundamental point of PQ: there has be thorough research going into it.”

Now, with speakers from McLaren and Lucid on board – two very different OEMs – it was worth digging a little deeper into how PQ might vary between markets and segments. Beyond their current roles, both Cheminot and Marcu boast experience at brands like Renault and JLR, and can speak to the nuances of high versus low volume production.

Marcu started by pointing out that “good execution is good execution” regardless of the vehicle in question, but conceded there will of course be differences – design constraints, different goals, levels of investment – between brands.

McLaren brings with it a heritage of racing and performance, targeting thrillseekers and those with an affinity for driving fast and ‘hands-on’ experiences. While this might afford a degree of freedom in some areas, it requires more of a focus on others.

Marcu explains that, in general, PQ for a supercar brand is about merging the desires of a driving purist and the luxury experiences that customers might be used to in their day-to-day life. “We do consider other industries such as hospitality, where it’s all about bringing that comfort. When you pay for a spa day, there are elements that invite you to pursue that service, and it is the same with a performance car.” Motorcycles, Marcu adds, might also share similar considerations around PQ.

For an EV brand operating in the premium sector, quiet cabins are a must. Cheminot says that might bring added pressure to keep squeaks and rattles to a minimum, but it also encourages a keener focus on the details. “The concept of a quieter cabin gives us the opportunity to bring attention to detail to the next level. We will even spend time considering the surface haptics of a material, how they sound when you touch the steering wheel or door panel. How switches acutate and the response you get from them.”

In any case, both of those segments involve the curation of a digital experience to some extent. And further down the market, to an even greater degree. Indeed, touchscreens and software-based functions have become the new standard for vehicle cockpits but this change has come hard and fast. How has PQ had to react?

Having initially embraced the technology – partly due to the ‘hype factor’ – many drivers quickly began to feel dissatisfied with the quality of what was on offer. “Sometimes they were just deemed too much hassle,” recalls Marcu, “so from a perceived quality point of view, we learned that we need to find a balance and consider where traditional physical switches really need to be embedded.”

Automotive still follows Big Tech’s lead, but the gap between the two has shrunk dramatically. In fact, much of the same tech found with smart TVs and consumer electronics can be found in the car, often with the same suppliers involved. “The technology for screens and tablets progresses really quickly,” Marcu continues, “but nowadays – especially in the EV segment – you have Gorilla glass, the same resolution, the same OLED technologies. So it’s more or less the same.”

Cheminot flags the screen in the Lucid Gravity, an uninterrupted super-slim 34-inch OLED screen. This sounds like a lot, but it is a different beast to earlier attempts across the industry. “Back in the day you used to have big screens but they could be quite chunky. But now we’ve learned how to implement that super advanced technology into the car: you don’t want [that tech] to feel foreign, you want it to feel like it’s a direct integration from your daily life.”

Lighting now sits within this conversation too as it happens, but Cheminot has a warning: it must be subtle and cannot – we repeat, cannot – be tacky.

Clearly, there is plenty to consider as a PQ expert. The field has been described as a blend of art and science, combining measurable factors with ‘gut feel’ to create a product that resonates. It takes a deep understanding of many different specialties and also a knack for communication.

“When I got my first job in PQ,” recalls Marcu, “my manager said that if by the end of the year I didn’t know at least 100 people in the company, I had done something very wrong. After 13 years, I realise that he was so right about that.”

“It really is a big cross-functional role within a company,” adds Cheminot. “Whether you are based in the design studio as craftsmanship or directly with the engineers, it is the same story. You have to be really good at communicating and strong networks within the company, because you will work with a lot of different people all the time.”

What does all this mean at the end of the day? In one word: success. Special guest Kyungmin Lee, previously of Renault Group but currently independent, summed things up nicely. “Successful companies ensure strong PQ by making it both a daily practice and a strategic priority. When PQ becomes a core part of decision making and development, it ensures consistency and long-term quality.”