Ive and profile writer Ian Packer were riding in Ive's chauffeured Bentley on I-280, a beautiful but busy stretch of highway that cuts through Silicon Valley.
"There are some shocking cars on the road," Ive said, indicating a Toyota Echo.
Packer asked him to elaborate.
"It is baffling, isn't it? It's just nothing, isn't it? It's just insipid."
The comment came as part of a larger conversation about carelessness in design. Ive hates the fact that so many current products seem to be designed to be "different, not better," or made only with cost and schedule in mind, with not enough attention to how they look and work.
"So much of our manufactured environment testifies to carelessness," he said. "At the risk of sounding terribly sentimental, I do think one of the things that just compel us is that we have this sense that, in some way, by caring, we're actually serving humanity."
Ive has apparently been complaining about the design of cars for years, according to his friend, designer Marc Newson. Whatever Apple is working on, you can expect it to look quite different from most of the cars on the road today.