Tottenham Court Road tube station has a really interesting atmosphere right now. This granddaddy of tube stations is about to be engulfed in a huge redevelopment project in preparation for London's Crossrail. It's pretty dilapidated and today there were some amazing distressed billboards, in no-man's land between ads.
Soho, London, 6 August 2009.
The new Jaguar XJ, Saatchi gallery, Chelsea, London - July 10th 2009
Sticking with our Callum brothers theme today, Jaguar chose Chelsea in central London as the place to launch its new XJ last week. This big cat is what Jaguar's design boss Ian Callum calls a return to the values of Jaguar during the William Lyons era - to "produce the most exciting cars in the world". Callum, impressive and passionate, described the launch of this new car as a "tipping point for the Jaguar brand - one Britain should be proud of".
Tipping points are tricky to pinpoint and if I was asked what was tipping right now, I'd say it was luxury car sales - off a cliff. But Jaguar is buoyant and claims modest recent sales growth, while other makers universally tanked.
But while the wealthy car buyer is feeling rather less flush, he or she now has something entirely new to angst about. Despite looking from assorted angles like a Maserati Quattroporte, an XF, a Lexus SC (ouch), a Citroen C6, Granada Scorpio, Hillman Avenger and a Morris Marina Coupe, the Jaguar XJ is a quite lovely thing. In a great BBC TV moment this April, writer Michael Smith's documentary "Me and My Car" featured a scene where Smith sank into the passenger seat of a vintage Jag saloon and said "I'd like to get pissed in this car". Clearly Callum was listening. "People are gonna have a good time in a Jaguar" is his boast. I'd get pissed in the back of this car any day of the week.
The car's got some neat, really focused technology, too - without getting silly. As the great Jean Jennings said to us recently, "If it doesn't make me drive better, make it go away." All of the dash instruments on the XJ (the bit in front of the driver with the speedo, etc) are a screen, with the dials all digitally rendered. In demos it looked fantastic and it's a flexible place where info like where to turn left and what music is playing appears. It's also the place where prompts appear for the voice command features. This is infinitely preferable to putting that stuff in the centre console, as Joe and I had to endure recently in the nervous-breakdown-inducing Ford Sync system.
There's other cool stuff, too. A huge 'dual angle' video screen in the centre dash which can display two different images at the same time, with each appearing clearly to driver and passenger. Which is, well, just so much fun.
The body is aluminium, so is as light as its smaller, steel sister, the XF. The 3.0 V6 diesel is claimed to do more than 40 miles per gallon, gets to 60 mph in 6 seconds and emits 184 grams of CO2. Which is pretty impressive.
Jag has also focused on making the hi-fi sound really good. While recognising you will probably bring your iPod along. But it has a hard disc that rips CDs uncompressed and has a Gracenote database.
But back to those looks, which have thrown the cat amongst the pigeons. Although Jaguar has been saying for months that the new XJ was radical, no one was totally prepared for this long, fast-back look, complete with blacked-out D pillar and a rear end that marks a complete departure for Jaguar design.
Never before has an aspect of a Jaguar's design caused so much kerfuffle...
There's an old adage which says never judge a car's design purely from photos; wait until you've seen it in the flesh, and even then - make sure you see it moving, on the road, and in traffic before you make a true call on the design. This is truly a design to which this applies. I sat at the launch breakfast on Friday morning riveted to the thing rotating in front of me, trying to decide whether it was beautiful. I've concluded that the XJ is quite a looker - with much less of the heavy, lumpiness around the rear three quarters than seems in the photos and with a rear haunch that does, as Callum claims, make it very coupe-like.
If you, too, fancy staring open mouthed at the thing revolving, you can watch this video I took. And below is a (car-nerd-level) outline by design director Ian Callum talking us through the design.
And if you still haven't made your mind up about whether that rump works or not, check out some of our detailed shots in this photoset (click anywhere on the photos to link through to the original flickr set):
Mark Charmer is a founder of The Movement Design Bureau, a think tank.
CCS, Art Center, Coventry, Pforzheim. To those in the car industry, and specifically the design part of it, these names will be well known. They represent the handful of educational establishments with dedicated automotive, or transportation design courses that exist around the world. It's likely that the person heading the team of designers who designed the car you're currently driving, attended one of these schools.
Perhaps most renowned of all the educational establishments teaching vehicle design though, is the Royal College of Art in London - whose graduates include Peter Stevens (McLaren F1), Peter Horbury (a multitude of Volvos), Peter Schreyer (TT), Marek Reichman (Aston Martin) and Martin Smith (recent European Fords). Which is why half of the auto design industry appears at Kensington Gore, every year, on one (typically hot and sweaty) night in late June, as the current year's crop of MA students graduate, showing off their final projects.
This year, their challenge of securing a job in one of the world's handful of automotive design studios is made all the more challenging by the economic meltdown - which has seen car makers go bankrupt, selling 30% fewer cars than a year ago, and shutting down design outposts. This year, two of the most interesting projects on show come from Magdalena Schmid and Hong Yeo - and we captured their projects, and the conceptual thinking behind them on video. They're well worth checking out... (yes I know we would say that) but these models are the result of many months of hard labour, and are quite beautiful objects in their own right. More than that though, what these designers have to say, and their respective attitudes towards the industry, gives hope that the flagging auto industry could still have a bright future. Oh, and if you know of a job going in a design studio near you, then they'd love to hear from you! (their email addresses are at the end of their respective videos).
Magdalena Schmid's BMW "Pixie" concept:
Hong Yeo's VW "Build your own car" concept:
Hopefully, we'll have some more coverage of other projects at the show before too long, so watch this space...
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 30th June 2009
Disclosure: Joseph Simpson is a visiting lecturer on the Vehicle Design course at the RCA, and graduated from the college with an MPhil in Vehicle Design in 2009.
Today, on the terrace behind London's Somerset House, Riversimple launched the culmination of nine years research and development - their new open source, hydrogen powered city car. Like Local-Motors in the US (more on whom soon), Riversimple are utilising open source principals to design and develop a new car. But that's only half the story. Riversimple have, in effect, today launched a blueprint for how the car industry could reinvent itself - with wholesale changes to the way vehicles are designed, how they're fueled, where and how they're built, and how they're sold.
We captured a heap of footage at this morning's launch event and we'll get much of it online over the next day or so. Like us, you might be sceptical about the potential of hydrogen fuel cells, or the application of open-source principals in a hardware, rather than software setting. In this first video, Hugo Spowers - CEO of Riversimple, explain some of the principals behind, and answer some of the pressing questions about the car and the company behind it. It makes for interesting watching...
Full photoset by Mark, from today's event (click on photos to go to the flickr page):
Note: All of The Movement Design Bureau's published content - including our videos and photos you see, is creative commons 3.0 licensed. That means you can use it, republish it or mash it up on your own site - just include a link back to this page.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 16th June 2009
Roland Barthes suggested that cars were the modern day equivalent of Gothic Cathedrals, “the Supreme creation of an era. Conceived with passion by unknown artists”. That's still true to this day. While fashion designers and architects have become household names and outright superstars, car designers are little known, often lost in the cloak of their brand’s identity. Of all the names that the average non-car nerd may have heard of, three are most likely to stand out: Patrick le Quement, Chris Bangle, and J Mays. So with le Quement retiring after 22 years as head of Renault design, and Bangle recently leaving BMW under unclear circumstances, this leaves Mays as arguably the most publicly recognisable car designer in the world right now.
Calm and unassuming in person, you’d never know that Mays was responsible for the design direction of (and for the hundreds of designers behind) Ford’s various brands and nameplates. Up until recently of course, this not only included Ford, Lincoln and Mercury - but Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin too. This led Mays to describe his job as being “about a mile wide and an inch deep.” But with PAG disbanded, and Volvo about to follow Jag, LR and Aston out of the Ford stable door, Mays seems pleased that his job is becoming “an inch wide and a mile deep.”
Clearly, he’s got more time to focus on making Ford’s core products stellar once again (recent cars such as the Flex and Taurus suggest this is already happening), along with giving under-nourished Lincoln and Mercury some love too. It’s the Lincoln C concept – unveiled at Detroit’s NAIAS in January 2009 - that we were primarily in town to talk to him about. Yet while that car is well worth a closer look, it’s the bigger issues facing the car industry and the world of car design that we really wanted his views on.
The Lincoln C Concept in Ford's product development studio
So here, Mays - the man behind VW's famous Concept One and Audi's influential Avus – who now also acts as Ford’s Chief Creative Officer, gives his views on a whole host of design subjects. From why the computer is today’s hotrod, to how he believes Ford is leading the way in user research, and why the skill-set of tomorrow’s car designer might need to be quite different to that of today’s.
As Ford moves forwards with its ‘One Ford’ strategy, it’s likely that many of the things you see from the brand will have been touched by the hand of Mays. So watch the video at the top of the article, to get an insight into how the future of the blue oval might look…
Full transcript follows, link to full unedited interview at bottom of the transcript>>
Continue reading "J Mays: Ford's Global Design Chief on why 'the computer is today's hotrod'" »
The UK Government’s decision to provide £250M ($360M) of funding, in the form of £5000 grants for customers to buy electric cars looks like big news at first glance. So, is it a really smart move from the UK Government, committed to incentivising change and driving consumer behaviour?
On the face of it, yes, but scratch below the surface and the scheme has more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese. First up, there are currently around 33 Million vehicles on the UK’s roads. If you do the maths, then at £5000 per car, £250M of grants gives you 50,000 cars. To me, that looks like a bit of a drop in the ocean. Hardly world-changing is it?
From a wider transportation futures perspective, what’s more worrying is that the Government has decided to delay the introduction of this scheme until 2011. It’s not clear why, but we aren’t the only ones wondering if it’s got something to do with the fact that none of the mainstream manufacturers will sell you an EV now, but by 2011 many of them will.
The problem with this approach is that it could crush a fledgling market, which in the UK has grown slowly but surely with a mix of small city EVs and some clever, quick marketing thinking from the likes of GoinGreen who import the Reva from India and rebadge it Gwiz. Worse than that, these vehicles – which are classed as quadricycles – won’t be eligible for the £5000 incentives. That’s some way to go about building and opening up new markets, Mr Mandelson.
Equally frustrating is that commercial vehicles – like the Smith Edison and Modec trucks, aren’t included. ‘So what?’ you might argue; they’ll be bought by fleets who can afford the extra cost of EVs, or incorporate the savings into a longer-term business plan. But what about the thousands of sole traders and companies with just a couple of vans who make up the lionshare of the delivery vehicles running around cities? They are one of the critical, potentially most beneficial vehicle groups and users to be moving towards EV platforms.
Even the existing vehicle guys are asking questions. We’re currently in Dearborn, Michigan, looking at Ford’s design and sustainability work. Yesterday I asked the company’s director of Hybrid Platforms and Sustainable Mobility Technologies, Nancy Gioia, about the scheme and the affordability of EVs. You can see what she said in the video below, but let’s just say that she didn’t seem to think the £5000 incentive was a particularly sensible long term measure. She’s arguing for upfront investment in R&D. EVs are expensive to develop and build, and car companies are short of cash. There is another angle, of course – vast sums have been poured into car companies for advanced research, especially in hydrogen fuel cells. And we're still talking about that technology being 10, 20, 30 years away from primetime.
Governments have a key role to play in driving mass market adoption of EVs. Incentivising purchase is one thing, but that’s a fairly blunt, token-like stick in helping to cultivate a new market. The big auto guys have never run fast on this stuff, and they don’t really see a world beyond the car as we recognise it today. Getting electrified versions of the types of vehicles we know and drive now is going to be expensive in the foreseeable future years. The first EVs from recognised manufacturers will be expensive enough to make many still think twice about them, even if there’s a £5000 sweetener on the table.
So if it wants to encourage a sustainable system of mobility, the best role the Government could play is in opening up the data it has on how people move around to allow the innovators to really use it, and by smoothing a path for start-ups, councils, designers and blue-chips to work together, and actually co-create something new. Dare we mention it – providing greater tax breaks and grants for those who are really pushing the boundaries of advanced mobility research and development might be one of the best ways to do this.
The pioneers deserve a break. They were right to invest what they could in EVs and they should not be hung out to dry while the big automakers get breathing space to catch up. The government should be rewarding risk takers who, when others sat on their hands, helped shape a fledgling market. Let the mainstream car companies catch up, but help the small guys find a role in this exciting future.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 21st April 2009.
Disclosure: Ford Motor Company is sponsoring The Movement Design Bureau's Research work in 2009. We have an independent brief, looking at sustainability and design activities in the company. Ford has no control over what we publish - let us know if you don't see it that way.
Above: a uk Transit Connect in the pedestrianised zone in the centre of Kingston-Upon-Thames
I’ve spent much of the week chasing round after blokes wearing high-vis vests in South-West London. Why? It’s the attire of choice for what we colloquially term in Britain ‘white van man’ – the guys who drive delivery trucks and vans around our cities, day-in, day-out. I wanted to understand and film the life of a van driver, and his van, because earlier this week Ford announced the first of its four electric vehicles was going to be a small delivery van. And while this left some surprised (obviously, they were going to make an electric car, right?) I think it’s a smart move (see the video below) – and wanted to know if the guys who drive vans agreed.
The plan is to bring a new version of the Transit Connect we already have in Europe, to the US market for 2010, and offer a purely electric battery-powered version too. While it looks like the US will be first to receive the electric van, we think that the topic of delivery vans is truly relevant to cities all over the world. The boom in online shopping has seen their number increase dramatically in recent years, and the way vans are typically used is an ideal fit for the characteristics of an electric vehicle. Much more so than the typical family car, I’d venture.
Most vans live in cities. This means they’re subject to lots of stop-start traffic, and short journeys between drop-off points just a few miles apart (see the video below for more footage of vans in the city). This environment’s where an electric vehicle will tend to provide the greatest gains over a regular combustion engine - which is at its least efficient on short, cold, stop-start cycles. As mentioned, we’re conducting more in-depth research on this (more in a minute) but our, and Ford’s, hunch is the typical Transit Connect-type delivery van covers less than 100 miles each day. Most people’s concern about electric vehicles is to do with ‘range anxiety’ – or the “but what about when I need to drive 400 miles across the country in one go?” question. This is relevant for many car drivers, but a city delivery van makes huge sense as the market point at which to introduce an electric vehicle, because the nature of van-based deliveries in urban areas doesn’t require the infinitely extendable, on-the-go fill up capabilities (and range) that the current internal combustion engine, gasoline and fuel station combo offer.
Environmentally, electric vehicle in cities are advantageous because they eliminate tail-pipe pollution. The big deal here isn’t really carbon emissions and the climate change story, but the elimination of soot, particulate matter and NOx that the diesel vans emit, because these pollutants are thought to be one of the main causes of local respiratory diseases. And with city mayors around the globe taking the lead on cutting carbon emissions and getting tough with legislation, we’re already starting to see (and can envision much wider implementation of) central inner-city core areas becoming blanket emissions-free vehicle only zones. Are big-city shop owners going to need an electric, or hydrogen powered van to get deliveries to their stores in the not-too-distant future? We wouldn’t bet against it…
With many vans bought by fleet organisations (in London we reckon Virgin Media, Majestic Wine Warehouse, BT and Securicor run fleets of Transit Connects) – Ford gets the (useful) opportunity to closely monitor large numbers of these vehicles, getting real-world feed back easily and readily – much harder to do with individual car customers.
And we’re pleased to see that it’s Smith Electric Vehicles – a UK based firm - who’ll be doing the conversions for Ford. We mentioned them in our piece a couple of years back, about the opportunity we saw in a further electric delivery truck advantage – their (almost) silent running. Today, in cities like London, organisations like the big supermarkets – who want to make deliveries at night, can’t. Councils have to grant them special permits, and limit the number of night deliveries, because the noise disturbance to (sleeping) city residents caused by diesel tractor units, is too great. Eliminate this, and get a little inventive with the way goods are taken on and off the truck and into the store, and EVs could form the backbone of an entirely new nighttime delivery network. The benefit? Reducing congestion. Deliveries in the daytime, combined with the way our city centres have evolved, actually creates vast amounts of traffic congestion, because vans have to park in (and therefore) block traffic lanes to make drop offs.
So could electric vans underpin an entire new delivery network? It was an idea Florian Seidl - now a designer at Fiat, and I, explored last year, in a concept which you can see the results of below. We’ll revisit it as part of our ongoing research into the subject of electric vans, in the near future. For now, it looks like our hunch might have been right - electric vans are set to silently win the battle of the streets.
Above - Florian Seidl and Joseph Simpson's design for a new electric van-based delivery system - click for larger images... Below - Our vans photoset on flickr. We'll be adding to this over the coming weeks:
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 13th February 2009
All images - Joseph Simpson. "Forky" electric delivery vehicle image - joint authorship with Florian Seidl - used with kind permission.
Disclosure: Ford is sponsoring The Movement Deisgn Bureau's design research work in 2009.
