Motion sickness has long made road trips and daily drives unpleasant experiences, turning what should be a relaxing drive into one that is queasy and unpleasant. With cars increasingly autonomous and passengers spending more time staring at screens rather than the road, the issue is escalating. Apple, which has a reputation for taking head-on user experience challenges, is entering the fray with solutions designed to make car sickness a relic of history.
Why Motion Sickness Happens: The Science Explained
Motion sickness isn’t just a mental issue—it’s a conflict between your senses. When you’re in a moving vehicle, your inner ear and muscles sense motion, but if your eyes are focused on a stationary phone or tablet, they tell your brain you’re still. This mismatch triggers the nausea, dizziness, and headaches many passengers know all too well. Experts such as Dr. Behrang Keshavarz from The KITE Research Institute say that the issue is particularly bad when you focus your attention on something within the vehicle while the rest of the world whizzes by.
Apple’s Vehicle Motion Cues: How It Works
Apple’s Vehicle Motion Cues, which arrived in iOS 18, is a clever solution to this issue. Animated dots on the edges of your iPhone or iPad screen move in the direction of the car’s movement. When the car accelerates, brakes, or turns, the dots oppositely change direction, providing your brain with visual input that corresponds to what your body perceives. The system is based on the device’s internal sensors—accelerometers and gyroscopes—that sense movement and modify the animation in real time.
This capability is not merely cosmetic. By offering peripheral visual cues, Vehicle Motion Cues assist in closing the difference between what your body feels and what your eyes perceive. It may be triggered automatically if your device senses motion or enabled manually using the control center.
Real-World Testing and User Experience
Does it work? Similar to most solutions that include human biology, there is variance. Some users experience considerable relief, yet others—such as a reviewer on a taxi ride—still got queasy after a few minutes of screen use. Michael Barnett-Cowan, director of the Multisensory Brain and Cognition Lab at Waterloo University, explains that individual differences are enormous. For a few, Apple’s feature might be a breakthrough; for others, it may not assist or even exacerbate the sensation if the visual cues fall behind the actual motion of the car.
The idea works, research says. Experiments indicate that synchronizing visual cues with real-world motion can eliminate motion sickness. The trick is accuracy—if the cues are even a little behind, they can work against you.
Apple’s Vision Beyond the Car: Patents and Future Automotive Features
Vehicle Motion Cues is only part of Apple’s conception of the future of mobility. The company has been granted many patents, suggesting cars built around a digital experience as well as physical travel. Concepts range from virtual reality systems for stabilized passenger content to holographic head-up displays on windshields and hidden touch controls in doors and seats. There’s even a patent for an intelligent window-tinting system that automatically adjusts for privacy and climate.
Apple’s strategy is systems-based: it’s not just about going from point A to point B but also making every second inside the vehicle comfortable, productive, and interesting.
The Competitive Landscape: Tech Giants and Automotive Innovation
Apple has company in pursuing this landscape. Google and Meta, tech giants, are also chasing patents and creating systems that blur the boundaries between car, device, and cloud. Traditional automakers are ramping up efforts, too, with companies like Ford and Toyota investing heavily in autonomous systems, connectivity, and in-cabin experiences. Patent activity is intense—Toyota alone has filed over 236,000 automotive patents in the past 20 years, while Bosch and Hyundai are pushing electrification and advanced driver-assistance systems.
Apple’s strength is in bringing hardware, software, and user experience together in a way that works beautifully. If it can bring that magic to cars, it might just redefine what we want from our vehicles.
Accessibility and Integration: Making Cars More Human-Centric
Accessibility is a central component of Apple’s latest releases. Beyond Vehicle Motion Cues, the company is introducing features such as Voice Control, visual impairment-friendly color filters, hearing loss-friendly sound recognition, and eye-tracking technology to allow hands-free operation. The purpose is obvious: vehicles—and devices within them—ought to be usable by anyone, regardless of capability or motion sensitivity.
As autonomous cars become more prevalent and riders spend more time on the road than behind the wheel, such innovation will play a larger role. Apple’s wager is that the mobility of the future is not merely about arriving at a place—it’s about making the trip worthwhile, accessible, and comfortable.
