Technology and power? No; it's the humble cup-holder we fall in love with

It's quiet in the back of the car... too quiet. The glow of the twin LCD screens makes bluish ghosts of the kids, rapturously glued to Shrek, Spider-Man or whatever else is this week's fad.

Dad's at the wheel, eyes flicking from the sat-nav to the road ahead. Mum's got her iPod plugged into the stereo, having downloaded a podcast before setting off.

For some doom-mongers, this picture is a nightmare that signals the breakdown of communication within our society, alienating individuals from their families and the environment around them. But is it really? Our cars are more than just machines for getting around in, a new study suggests. Even the daily commute may be something of a comfort zone, finds The Secret Life of Cars, a survey of driving habits and foibles commissioned by BMW.

A team from the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) in Oxford spent months sitting in cars with drivers, analysing their routines and driving styles and documenting journeys and the incidents that happened.

Even the humble cup-holder emerges as a vital piece of technology in our 21st-century driving armour, sometimes even dictating the choice of vehicle.

Your vehicle's evolution into a "car-coon" is a response to the pressures of modern life, says Dr Iain McRury of the University of East London, one of the authors of the report. The car becomes a space unique to its driver, a place where you can gear up for work (more people sang in their cars in the morning than in the evening) or decompress after a long day. "It's a place to rethink our experiences, it allows us peace and solitude, and at the same time engages us," McRury says. "One couple who commuted together said they used the time on the journey home to work through problems and schedule events, and then when they got home they just got on with the rest of their day."

And how drivers communicate with other road users depends greatly on where they live. "Density of population does affect communication," McRury says. "In Wales, we found lower levels of communication between drivers, whereas in London the use of hand signals was much more pronounced. There's evolution, too; drivers are using signals once only employed by professional drivers, such as using indicators to say thank you."

Chris Bangle, BMW's group design director, was impressed by the findings. He said: "We want our cars to speak to people on an emotional level. What makes the car alive is for it to be responsive, animate. There has to be more of a message than, 'I'm sexy, I'm powerful.' People buy cars they are passionate about, they don't buy cars that they just use. People form a relationship with our cars; they discover them slowly. We want to achieve a long-lasting bond.

"In the design studio, we talk about the cars we work on as an entity, a being. We'll say stuff like, 'Why have you put these trousers on him today?' The cup-holder, for example, can be a difficult thing. It's one of the first questions we get asked by the top executives – 'Where's the cup-holder?" And there are so many factors to consider in the placement of a cup-holder; not near the electrics, not near controls. You end up with a tiny, tiny space to play with. You could go mad doing it."