I am not a technophobe, or a technological luddite. While not the most tech-sympathetic (witness how many computers and phones I’ve gone through in the last couple of years) I will typically give new tech, and geeky gadgets a fair crack of the whip. If they’re attached to a car, then all the better.
So give me ipod integration, navigation, cruise control and power seats. I’m up for them. I can even see the point in onboard fridges, TVs and the like.
But I just don’t get auto parking, which has been around for a while now and have recently experienced first hand. I realise that might put me at odds with many who'll welcome this feature as a boon, but here's my take...
It was standard on the top of the line Prius that we tested last month, and Ford rolled it out as a feature in some of its 2010 MY cars starting back in the summer - even winning awards for it. As you can see from the video below – using the systems in action, they vary only in the minor details: Press button. Car identifies big enough space. Slot car into reverse. Car steers, you brake. Done. Parked.
They work well enough, up to a point. As the guy in the Ford video suggested, the system needs a space around 120% the length of the car to get in to. That’s my first problem. In a lot of spaces in the city, that’s too small. I reckon on about 6-8 inches either end of the car is what I need (and often, what you’ve got to play with in a typical London street). Secondly these systems take longer to slot the car in to the space than an adept human driver. That might seem a small detail, but in the city, you’re often on a street, blocking traffic and under pressure to park, and park fast.
I'm not trying to gloat about my parking prowess. Seeing these systems in action is impressive – has a ‘wow’ factor even. But fundamentally, they aren’t as good as a good human. For me, until that changes, then I’m not interested. They simply become another techy thing for car makers to sell as extras – just like they do sat navs, power seats and more powerful stereo systems.
In a way, part of my problem is that they don’t go far enough.
Perhaps the next step on from these systems could offer something really useful. Link it – via the sat nav – to something like IBM's parking space sensors as part of a Smarter Cities programme – to help you actually find (and reserve) a vacant space. Then allow the car to completely take over – parking itself, controlling brake and throttle pedal. So the car really parks itself. You might even want to get out at the entrance of a parking lot, and let the car drive itself up three or four levels and slot into a tight space. Now that’s something I can see the value of.
* Henry Ford - upon the introduction of the Model T
Dan Sturges is a transport visionary. For twenty years he’s foreseen and been tackling some of the transport-related problems the rest of the world is only just starting to grapple with. Sturges isn’t anti-car. He is simply pro shaking up mobility full stop, and believes that far from just moving people in to electric cars, we need to introduce people to a variety of vehicles - ones that are the right size for each journey they make.
A couple of months back, I chatted to him over skype about his current thoughts on his company Intrago, the future of mobility, and what the auto industry is up to. You can see an edited highlight of that video below, and then after the jump I’ve pulled out and discussed what I think are the key points he made.
Rather than simply post a load of photos into a huge post here on the blog, I've uploaded some Prius photos, to form a photographic review which is hosted on my Flickr account. This set is fully captioned up, so do take a look through and feel free to comment. Click here to go to the set, or on the screengrab preview below:
All our photos, video and material is sharealike creative commons 3.0 licensed, so you can lift and reuse these images as you like. All we'd ask is that you link back to this site.
Just before I took off on a recent holiday, a man from Toyota came to pick up a (by then) not so shiny, white, new shape Prius that he'd dropped with me the previous week. It's a sign of how much this car moves the game on from the previous generation vehicle that I was slightly sad to see it go.
We've not hidden the fact that we aren't huge fans of the previous generation car - both as a vehicle in its own right, the image that exists around it, or the generic 'type' of person who seems to drive it. We therefore went into this test with a decent level of scepticism. But the new car is in a different league to its predecessor. It's bigger, yet feels even more at home on city roads. It has a bigger petrol engine, yet is more economical. The thousands who will buy this car, especially those upgrading from the previous model, will doubtless be delighted. For the rest of us who weren't fans before, it's true to say that the Prius is now a competent car which makes a decent case in its own right - you no longer need to make excuses for its hybrid drivetrain nature.
You can read some previous musings I had while actually living with the car here and here, but a couple of weeks after it left MDB towers, three things stand out - and we've split them in to three short videos:
The image and positioning of this new car - (includes our snapshot verdict)
The hybrid system, how it works and its three different modes
The car's interior design, features and equipment (and what we don't like)
For all that we were impressed with the new Prius though, we still can't get over one or two key issues and a few of the bigger picture questions it asks, rather than answers. We'll talk more about that next week in our post test wrap up and review - which will include a full details photoset.
I'm sitting here tonight trying to make sense of Ford's belief that the Fiesta Movement campaign is an example of the kind of social media that will translate into a successful Ford.
Here's a picture of what it's all about. A video by Parris Harris and Yoga Army, aka Phashion Army.
Fiesta Movement is getting quite the PR push at Ford right now and it'll only get worse as the December LA show draws near, when the Fiesta is actually launched in the US. What's the product? A car that Ford designed in Europe several years ago and launched there in autumn 2008. It hasn't even gone on sale yet in the US - it'll be a 2011 model year car.
"Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven't been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors.
When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away."
The reality is that this is what's happening right now in much of the car industry. And I fear it's happening in Ford, too.
Fiesta Movement is an ad campaign - nothing more. The philosophy that ever more "sophisticated" marketing can solve problems. Web-savvy, video-producing creative people will transform Ford's brand image and reconnect it with a new generation. Meanwhile Ford, despite thinking it's had a terrible year, has had a lucky one. Both of its major US competitors have gone into bankruptcy. General Motors and Chrysler are probably fatally wounded.
Let's talk about real stuff - well electric cars, which aren't real yet, but will be soon. Even in a world short on EVs and high on rhetoric, Ford's current global 'electric' product range is weak - the company has one star car - the fantastic Fusion Hybrid - and a scattering of dated Escape and Mariner SUVs. The next generation? Ford has been hanging on the fence about which suppliers to use for a Focus EV – and unless there's a big surprise, we're still in limbo on that and much else as Ford insists the numbers don't add up. We're so, so far, from the car Ford really should build - an electric F150 truck. Parris and Yoga talk about Ford reconnecting with the American psyche. But Americans, beyond a few areas on East and West coasts, don't want small cars. Most of them don't even want cars. They want trucks.
But the guys who design trucks are seemingly sitting elsewhere right now, watching a football game. So cars is the only place where innovation is happening. As GM and Chrysler fade away, Ford's key competition in that zone is now global. And be in no doubt that the global competition is about to become truly formidable. Renault Nissan has the boldest strategy of all - we were there to see Renault blow everyone away at Frankfurt in September, with bold plans for four production pure-electric cars by 2011, and Nissan is deadly serious about its mainstream, mass-market Leaf, due in 2011, and undoubtedly the first global car that will shake the Prius out the tree it's got right now all to itself.
And that's just the start. Volkswagen is doing intriguing things with very efficient diesel vehicles, BMW's Efficient Dynamics strategy makes Ford's new EcoBoost petrol engines look pretty conservative. And that's before we talk about Honda, Toyota or anyone else.
I can't help but think that Ford will default to present Renault Nissan as the crazy radicals, imagining an unrealistic future. When the reality is Renault Nissan are the pragmatists, because they and others have the pieces in place to push ahead. They've forged partnerships with entire countries to roll out electric cars, while Ford is trialing 15 electric Focuses in Hillingdon in North London, and in patches around the US.
Right now Ford is not a global car company. It is a multinational car company - in fact the granddad of multinationals - with different product, management and marketing teams on different continents. And it thinks it can treat customers in different places in different ways. Imagine if Apple did that, fobbing off its American customers with a social media campaign, to launch a product it introduced in Europe over 12 months earlier. Advertising guys, dressing up social media as big change, would get nowhere. Customers would see through it right away.
"Imagine if Apple did that, fobbing off its American customers with a social media campaign, to launch a product it introduced in Europe over 12 months earlier."
Toyota have lent us a new Prius for the week. Regular readers may remember that the last time we were in LA, we rented Toyota's ubiquitous hybrid for a few days, and came away somewhat unimpressed. We ended that piece by saying this:
"The final irony? For all its technical wonder, at the end of our trip
the Prius came out with an average of around 45.5mpg. Which is 5 mpg
short of the diesel Fiat Punto I use on the clogged streets of London."
But now there's a new Prius on the block. Toyota have moved the styling away from the dumpy, but highly identifiable shape of the second generation car, to something that is more crisply styled, and for want of a better word, 'dynamic' looking. The new car also agressively attempts to shut up those of us who've never been great hybrid fans, and who've long thought a good turbo diesel would be its fuel economy equal. The headline figure is 89g/km of Co2, and 72.4 mpg.
We'll run a regular blog/update over the week with our views on the car, but for now, first impressions are very favourable. The Prius is incredibly quiet - its new three way EV, Eco and PWR modes meaning you can switch the car's character quite decisively. In EV it will run electrically, up to 30mph for a couple of miles. Which means in stop start London traffic you barely have the motor kick in at all. In PWR, it's actually quite sprightly and responsive. Most impressive is that in 15 miles of chock-a-block London traffic, and without 'trying', we're getting 65.5mpg so far.
Wonder if we can keep that up over a week...
Check back for more soon. Right now, I have to dash and pick up my fiance, who demanded to be picked up in it from work once she heard I was in central London with it. A self proclaimed hybrid-hater, it'll be interesting to see if she's impressed as I am on first acquaintences. Oh and if you've any questions or things you'd like us to test, leave a comment or drop us a line.
We're heading down a road where large numbers of cars will be powered by batteries in the future. Aside from the cost of batteries (dropping fast), the main reason for consumers to hesitate about jumping into an electric vehicle (EV) in the next few years, is range anxiety. We are not suddenly going to develop cars with batteries in them which will cover 500 miles on a charge, so how are we going to cover longer distance journeys?
The auto industry is (sensibly) proposing a solution which meets the average driver's needs about 95% of the time. You'll be able to drop the kids at school, get to work, and then home again via the shops all on one overnight charge, which you'll do either at or outside your home. But for road trips and non-average commuters, a host of new partner firms (and industries) claim to have a solution to the range problem. Best know of these is BetterPlace - who are developing an electric car charging network in several countries, and who will provide roadside swap stations in Israel and Japan within a couple of years, where you drive in and a depleted battery will be swapped - within two minutes - for a fully charged one.
But there's another solution which falls between the standard eight hour overnight charge, and the battery swap solution. It's known as the "fast charge" and it's a term which is being bandied about with increasing frippery. We've seen a section of the emerging EV industry (both start ups and established auto OEMs) change their tune about this. Back in 2007, no one had an answer to the problem of how to juice up the car's battery quickly if you ran out while on the go. Yet just two years later, here's the stock answer:
As we hurtle towards this December's Copenhagen summit, there's almighty global momentum building around how seriously to tackle climate change. And in the end, whatever anyone might say, drastically reducing CO2 emissions implies drastically reducing energy consumption.
I'll be in Bath on Friday, that great Roman and Georgian spa city and powerhouse of British engineering, to talk at a Low Carbon Southwest event on a fairly contentious topic - cars.
We'll be exploring what meeting the energy reduction challenge in the car economy really involves. The event quotes the total number of new cars on the road as having risen by 17 per cent in the last decade.
But let me set this out more vividly, with numbers from the Worldwatch Institute:
The world vehicle fleet is estimated to be 622 million. In 2007, 71 million cars were produced, made up of 52.1 million cars and 18.9 million light trucks. In 2000 (remember, Millennium bug, parties, not long ago huh?) the fleet was 500 million. That's a 24% rise in just 7 years. Oh, and in 1950 the entire global vehicle fleet was just 53 million.
So when does the number of vehicles in the world saturate the market? Well it's already happened in key western markets. Yet the car industry still sees the answer as being to plough on and return to sales growth. Every big auto maker (there aren't any others) needs to see growth of at least 2% per year to survive in their current form. Who'd want to be in auto sales right now?
The first question is can this growth be sustained at the big picture level - can people move around with more and more vehicles on roads, while overall energy consumption from auto manufacturing, distribution and daily use gently falls, if we move to cleaner fuels and engines? The second question is what happens if sales growth isn't sustainable - if car sales are about to tip into permanent structural sales decline?
I'm going to focus on the latter and explain how it wouldn't be such bad news - great alternative stuff can replace those lost sales - vehicles we can use more, not less. Services that let us swing between modes of transport in ways we just can't today visualise. All this is possible with existing technology. And it can all be designed in a way that lowers overall energy consumption dramatically.
Of course, there's a third alternative. Moderately more efficient vehicles, gradual decline in auto industry, which adapts more slowly than society and its customers. Occasional death of car makers. No change. That's the one we need to try to avoid.
There's more details on the event here. It's free if you're a company researching low carbon stuff, if you're a designer or engineer or you are involved in low carbon startups.
The event runs from 9.30am to 12.30pm on Friday 2nd October at The Guildhall, Bath BA1 5AW.
What
were your favourite details from cars in Frankfurt? The vents on the
lower body sides of the VW L1 were far and away my personal highlight,
until I looked more closely at the door handles on the Rolls Royce
Ghost. But back in the real world, I was quietly impressed with the
fold-away centre seat design in the Ford Grand C-Max, a car that
otherwise leaves me quite cold. Aimed squarely at young families, I
suspect it’s a design feature that will not only make people go ‘oooh’
in the autoshow or dealership, but that they’ll really use in
day-to-day life - watch the video below to see a quick demo of how it
works.
To say that the seating layout in family cars is important, is as obvious as saying that cars need wheels. But it’s easy to forget that,
up until the age of about 20, many of us had difficult relationships
with our siblings. Certainly, the idea of sharing a rear bench for several hours
with my younger brother rarely filled me with joy, and there would
often be a spat ensuing before we’d got beyond the end of the
drive! So when the first Renault Scenic (the car that essentially created the c-size MPV segment in Europe) arrived, we’d pestered my dad into
buying one within just a couple of months of its launch – mainly because we
wanted separate, reclinable chairs, fold away picnic tables and cubbies
to keep our own books and walkmen in (no iPods in those days).
Ford Grand C-Max. Pity the name isn't as original as the folding chair design...
However,
the price of all that independent rear chair malarkey was that to fold
and remove them was quite a job (I seem to remember reading each chair
weighed something like 15kg.) – folding and removing them usually
resulting in skinned knuckles. So when Opel moved the game on with the
seven-seat Zafira, it invented a very neat seating arrangement termed
‘flex-7’ which meant you could convert the vehicle into a van, without
needing to take out all the chairs and leave them at home.
Access to that rearmost row of seats in the 7-seat MPV sector
remains something of an issue, however. In the smaller, c-segment
market that the Grand C-Max enters, the rearmost pews are only really
big enough for kids. Yet to get there, they need (and this applies to
most vehicles in the Segment such as the Scenic, Verso etc) to tilt and
slide the outermost centre row seat forwards to access the rearmost
row. Given that the chairs tend to be heavy, and the strength needed to operate the lever mechanisms
which tilt the chairs, this isn’t an ideal arrangement when small
people with tiny fingers are typically the ones trying to scramble into the back.
Now you see it...
...and now you don't
In
fact, it's quite rare that seven full seats are used in these cars,
typically it’s just five or six on the school run. So by allowing the
middle row centre seat to be ‘disappeared’ into one of its neighbours,
small kids can just walk straight through the vehicle to the back row
without needing to get mum or dad to perform chair gymnastics. Ford have spent time designing a centre chair which makes all this possible. As the back tumbles forwards
onto the squab, a secondary part of the backrest folds in, allowing the
seat to be compact enough to fit inside the outer seat squab. The
second device which allows this arrangement to work – and a critical
change from the designs found in the opposition, is that instead of
being secured to the floor, this centre seat is in fact supported by
cantilevering off the outer chair. Once folded away, what’s left is a clear gangway between
the two outer seats, allowing kids to simply climb in and walk through
to the rearmost row.
It’s one of those ideas that gets you thinking ‘why didn’t
anyone think of this before?’ But is a neat, if small, example of
user-research led design, where actually observing how families use
cars and spending time with them as they go about their lives has
resulted in something genuinely useful and new. It’s amusing to hear,
too, that Ford’s engineering and design teams aren’t above playing with
Lego Technic in order to help them work out how the mechanism would
work. We wonder if it was spending time observing kids that gave them that idea too.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 22nd September 2009
Disclosure: Ford is sponsoring the Movement Design Bureau's research work in 2009
There was a huge amount to see in Frankfurt, so if you're pushed for time and want the quick whizz-around check out my "Frankfurt in Four minutes" review video. However, on the off-chance that you missed some of the concepts or want to have a (slightly) longer look, I've clipped out some 2-minute long videos for a few of the key concepts. So, without further ado, here's the:
BMW efficient Dynmaics Concept:
Renault Twizy:
Citroen ReVolte:
Renault Zoe and the 'ZE' range video:
As with the four minute video, you can watch most of these in HD mode, so it's worth clicking through to Youtube (logo in bottom right corner) and then clicking on high quality mode if you want them to see them in full, clear view. We'll have more thoughts and a bit of indepth coverage on some of these, plus more Frankfurt coverage, shortly.
