Stanford launches new era of automobile research with the Revs program

Stanford University, in collaboration with The Revs Institute of Automotive Research in Naples, Florida, has established a new multidisciplinary center dedicated solely to the study of cars.

The kick off event for the center will be hosted on April 7, with the formal launch of the Revs program, conceptualized as a hive of interdisciplinary activity for studying every aspect of the automobile, including the seemingly endless stream of literature, film and song.

Professor Clifford Nass who founded and directs the Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab would be the director of the Revs Program at Stanford. A University publication quotes Nass as saying, Our primary goal for the Revs Program at Stanford is to create a vital and much-deserved intellectual community around the car as technological and aesthetic artifact and cultural symbol.

One of the primary processes comprising research in the Center is what is being touted as an auto-biography - tracing the history of a car in minute detail while exploring the archaeology, psychology, engineering and design behind it.

During the April 7 event called Celebrating the Automobile, which is expected to bring together many devotees, experts, collectors, archaeologists, social scientists, engineers, designers, humanists, legal scholars and race-car drivers, the Revs program will be kick started formally through such study of a 1933 Bentley, a sports racer that belonged to English sporting legend Eddie Ramsden Hall. The car is a 4.25-liter, boat-tailed beauty in British racing green that is the envy of car collectors the world over.

According to Sven Beiker, a lecturer at Stanford's School of Engineering, Over the last few decades, as our cars have grown more complex, more computerized and more connected, Silicon Valley has become increasingly important for automotive innovation. Stanford, being involved in a range of automotive research was considered the natural choice for the launch of the Revs program.