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I think everyone can agree a well-designed car is a piece of art, like a Donatello or a Rodin.

While it’s true automobiles are created to transport people and things, that doesn’t devalue their design or aesthetic appeal, which is why some call them “sculpture in motion.”

A vehicle starts out as a series of illustrations that eventually become a clay sculpture. Throughout the process, a wide variety of sometimes conflicting priorities must be considered when creating a car design. These include the needs of the driver and passengers, the ability for the design to be manufactured and the hopes and dreams of the designer who created it.

Michael Santoro of San Diego, CA, is a former automotive designer who now teaches car design. He founded and oversees a company making Apple accessories, which has met with huge success, and is also a highly-respected artist known for paintings of his favorite Formula One drivers, including Niki Lauda and Ayrton Senna.

A native of New York City, Santoro graduated from the world-renowned High School of Art & Design, where he was a member of the first-ever industrial design high school program in the country.

After graduating from Pratt Institute with a bachelor’s degree in industrial design, Santoro was accepted as the first-ever post-graduate design intern at Chrysler Corporation where, upon completion, he received an offer to join the staff.

Santoro spent six years as an automotive designer at Chrysler, where he created the groundbreaking cab-forward exterior design of the 1995 Car of the Year, the first-generation Chrysler Cirrus and its sister vehicle, the Dodge Stratus. Before leaving Chrysler, Santoro penned the 1996-2006 Jeep Wrangler, bringing

it back to its iconic roots while pushing it forward into the new century. Landing a job as a car designer with Chrysler at 21 was unheard of. As the new kid on the team, Santoro was able to bring a young and fresh perspective to everything he worked on for the carmaker. “I knew that this was a great opportunity and a dream job,” he said. “You Michael Santoro have a better chance of of San Diego, CA, is playing in the NFL than you a former automo- do becoming a professional tive designer and inventor who now teaches car design car designer in the United States, so I was excited to and oversees his get a chance.” company MacCase, Santoro was able to see the creators of the Apple-specific case market a car design team in action and learned as much as he could. “Within a given studio, each designer creates his or her own proposal. You’re competing with your coworkers for the opportunity for your design to go into production.” Most production programs are on four-year cycles. Once the vehicle is in production, they will normally do a facelift every two years, at which point they will do things like tweaking the front and rear fascia or adding new wheel options.

For a car’s exterior, designers work with industrial sculptors to create full size models in clay over a wood and foam structure. Once the model is complete, it’s presented to upper management, who choose from the various proposals presented.

In this case, it was Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca and Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, among others. For the Cirrus/Stratus program, eight full-size clay models were done. The board liked Santoro’s design for the Cirrus and it went into production, eventually chosen as the 1995 Car of the Year.

Did Santoro get a bonus when he and his team received the highly prestigious award?

“No, but I got to see my design made real and put into the world. That’s a happiness no one can ever take away.”

Tesla Vision Will Capture Hazards, Turn Signals, Hand Gestures, More, Says Musk

by Maria Merano, Teslarati

In a recent set of posts on Twitter over the July 10-11 weekend, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared some capabilities that Tesla Vision could receive in the near future.

These include the ability to detect turn signals, hazards, police and ambulance lights and even hand gestures.

Musk’s update initially came as a response to a video from FSD Beta tester Eli Burton, who spent the weekend testing the capabilities of FSD Beta V9. In one of his tests, the Model S Performance owner noticed Tesla Vision now captures and renders the tail lights of other vehicles as they waited in an intersection.

Musk commented on the post with his update, and in a later response, said FSD Beta should also react and respond to ambulance and police vehicles when their lights are on.

Musk further said FSD Beta would later gain the ability to “listen” for sirens and alarms, which should help Teslas handle and react appropriately to emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire trucks, as well as police cars.

Musk’s mention of FSD Beta’s “listening” capability is interesting, especially since Teslas today seem to be only equipped with in-cabin microphones. Considering a car’s cabin would likely be saturated with sounds from media being played on the vehicle, developing an accurate system to detect sirens and alarms may be a very challenging endavor.

Even without the ability to “listen” for alarms and sirens, however, the upcoming improvements for Tesla Vision outlined by Musk would most certainly make Autopilot and the Full Self-Driving suite safer and more robust. Every update to Tesla Vision is a step toward the company’s long-term goal of achieving autonomous driving, after all, and the ability to detect and interpret lights and hand gestures plays a key role in reaching that target.

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