In the not-so-distant past, product and system designers in the automotive industry made major changes to vehicles in response to consumer demands.

Today, the auto industry has begun leading the consumer toward greater innovation.

Nowhere has this trend of getting in front of consumer expectations been more evident than at the most recent Los Angeles Auto Show, where Faurecia -- the world's sixth-largest automotive supplier -- introduced no fewer than two dozen such innovations in automotive seating, interiors, exhaust systems and front-end technology.

How Your Smartphone Can Make You More Comfortable

Faurecia Automotive Seating, for example, has built on the consumer's penchant for smartphone apps, enabling vehicle occupants to use their phones to initiate automatic and personalized seat adjustments in their cars.

Today, automotive suppliers are "championing the consumer and working to anticipate their needs."

Faurecia's SmartFit technology uses a smartphone to take a picture of the occupant and guides the driver or passenger through an easy-to-follow process for creating a tailored fit for that individual's body. At the auto show, Faurecia introduced two new downloadable apps for SmartFit.

GPSFit combines the information from the original SmartFit fitting with the road type, vehicle speed and other environmental conditions to dynamically predict the best seating position and adjust the occupant's posture to ensure the best possible driving experience.

GPSFit pulls speed and road data from the vehicle's GPS, determining whether the vehicle is on an interstate or a country road, for example.

View article on one page