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.
I’ve had several conversations recently with people who are either in or strongly connected to the auto industry, who’ve all told me the same thing:
“In the future, we’ll all have two cars – a petrol/diesel/hybrid for long distance, and an electric car for city/local trips.”
This isn’t just interesting because it’s completely different to what they’d have told you two years ago (although that in itself is an important sign of how much the market and mindset has moved). No, it’s that in all straight-faced seriousness, they believe a majority of people will park (and own) two cars on their drive in years to come.
While conversations with people in the industry tend to be a bit abnormal anyway, as they quickly turn to talk of how many classic Porsche’s they’ve got in their garage - due to it being their passion, the stark truth is that in the UK less than 30% of people have access to more than one car, and in urban areas that figure shrinks dramatically. Most people view cars as a convenient, comfortable way of getting direct from A to B – and choose a single vehicle that best suits their need. Their car tends not to be something they’re obsessional about.
Currently, focus, energy and cash is all going into new powertrain development. In many regards it needs to. But there’s an unstated assumption (alluded to by those guys I quote above) that once we’ve overcome the current roadhump, and get workable electric / hydrogen cars to market, business in the car industry will continue pretty much as it did before. People will go down to their local car dealer and choose what suits their needs and desires, every two or three years.
There’s a problem with that though. The average person can afford to run, maintain and often only has space to park, one vehicle. Which vehicle they choose to buy right now depends on what their personal circumstances are and the types of journeys they do. Hence young people living around cities tend to buy small hatchbacks, and middle class families buy large estates or (more recently) SUVs. Both work best within a certain usage envelope, but if needed, can cover every single transport base (what I mean by this is that a city car often isn’t at home on a motorway, but if needs be, you could still drive one all the way to Milan tomorrow).
This cover-all bases approach is one of the reasons current vehicles are so comparatively inefficient. Creating right-sized vehicles with the right powertrains, for a variety of different journey scenarios, therefore makes a load of sense. But it creates a scenario where suddenly, your average one-car buyer is faced with the prospect of buying something that can no longer meet every single journey need. That the car industry’s answer to this appears to be “well, you’ll just have to buy two cars!” makes me feel a little bit sick. Reports suggest that even if we replaced most of the current gasoline vehicle fleet with EVs, the planet would still be in fairly major mess. To quote BP’s incoming Chairman: “The growth of car ownership and airtravel is unsustainable.”
This is one reason we’re seeing start-up car companies such as Riversimple promoting the idea of leasing rather than selling to customers - their argument is that it encourages them to develop long lasting vehicles, without built in obsolescence, which are absolutely optimised for their environment. It’s probably why Daimler are quietly building out a potentially very interesting next generation car club in the shape of car-2-go, and most shockingly of all – one of the reasons we’re seeing Exxon getting not only into electric cars, but vehicle sharing, with the announcement this week that they were behind an EV being dropped into a pilot programme in Baltimore.
Of course, while most customers aren’t as car obsessed as your author or those working in the car industry, they are however, quite accustomed to the idea of owning their own car. It’s a big jump to just having access to one as a means of mobility, one that other people can also use. In the average customer’s mind, this throws up a whole set of doubts and concerns.
There are ways to begin to address this, and I’d argue now’s the time to focus on doing so. Primarily, having recognised automotive brands address the issue and be present in the space is a key step. Not to do a disservice to Zipcar and their ilk who really kick-started and ‘own’ the car-share space right now, but Daimler getting into the sector excites me quite a lot more. They have the name, size and capital to lever mobility on demand/car sharing as a key part of their business, if they so choose. They can reach and communicate to people, that not only they offer such a service at all, but fundamentally, communicate what the hell it really is and why you might want to consider using it. The name, presence and PR machine means that – done wholeheartedly, they could reach millions of potential customers in a way it would take Zipcar years to do.
This leads me to the second key element, which is education. It’s easy to assume that most people now know what someone like Zipcar actually does. But the truth is, most probably still don’t. The name, ‘car sharing’ is confusing, for a start. You don’t actually get in the car at the same time as a stranger – but a lot of people think you do.
I’d advocate a large-scale education programme – which reaches all the way from teaching groups of kids about mobility and the future of cars, as demonstrated very ably by Dan Sturges:
And it should run all the way through existing industry and governmental channels, reaching right up to dealership education programmes. Helping the people in the sales end of the automotive industry not only develop new models of ‘selling’, but to assist people navigating their way through various mobility and transport options of the future may be the key to making this stuff work in a big way.
Done right, the people in the car showroom of the future could offer much more than the ability to simply sell someone a vehicle on a three year finance deal. They could help consumers overcome the misconceptions that currently surround not only diesels, hybrids, EVs, and hydrogen cars, but also car-sharing, leasing, and mobility on demand. Ultimately, the car dealership of the future becomes a one-stop mobility shop; which does much more than just sell cars. In times when many car dealerships are struggling to stay in business due to plummeting car sales, surely it’s an idea that many could embrace?
Fleet vehicle buyers can spend the time to understand the bottom line benefits - environmental and financial - for making the electric vehicle switch in a way that ordinary car buyers cannot always do, making fleet buyers able to switch to new electric vehicle options more easily than ordinary car drivers.
Our new project - Electric Delivery - seeks to understand the commercial electric vehicle market in real detail: over the next six months we will talk to vehicle manufacturers, fleet managers, drivers, customers, and everybody else involved in making real electric vehicles work.
That's for tomorrow. Electric Deliveryis about documenting the progress of the working electric vehicle today. White vans first.
See more of The Movement Design Bureau's coverage of future transport, strategy and vehicles - including several in depth interviews and analysis with Ford's top sustainability and design people, here.
Eric Britton has a plan. The man behind worldstreets.org, thinks a lot about the future of transport, and its connection to the overheating nature of the planet. His 'Plan B' vision is a radical twelve point blueprint that he thinks needs to be gone through to stop us cooking the planet - and is an interesting read.
In the green transport field right now, alongside electric cars, high-speed rail, and all the usual stuff that gets tossed around, perhaps the most intriguing idea concerns not the development of new products, but the networking together, and sharing of existing ones. Our cars, bicylces, space - how do we 'use' them more effectively? Take cars. Right now, we're fast-forwarding to a world of hybrids and EVs - but what's the point when we've still got single vehicle occupancy, one-person-to-one-car ownership, and one hour in every 24 utilisation rates?
The problem is that at the very heart of the notion of today's car is a concept built around ownership, freedom and the ability to cut yourself off in a little glass and steel box. Your car is a space that, right now, you probably only choose to 'share' with your friends and family. Sharing a car with a complete stranger (even if you're not both in it at the same time) is a relatively big leap to make, but it's something worth thinking about.
That's what Eric wants to look into in more depth. So in the video chat (above) we had with him a few weeks back, he described the idea of a conference - for want of a better word - to draw people together to talk about sharing within the bounds of future transportation. On the first day, Eric suggests transportation-related talk should be banned. Instead, the attendees - linked together with experts and interested parties across the world via video and internet, would seek to understand the human psychology behind sharing things. Then on the next days, this would be developed into the field of transportation applications. The big news? Eric doesn't think it will work without a woman at the helm...
On stage at Daimler's museum, right now, Daimler and Tesla are
announcing a strategic alliance. Daimler plans to invest in Tesla -
quoting it paid "a double digit million-dollar sum for around a ten percent stake" in the silicon valley company. The two will go forward to co-operate, perhaps - we speculate - even on future models.
Talking
about how the two combine the best of 'future' and 'historical' auto
industry, what we found most interesting about what is being said, is
that Daimler - one of the most vehement pushers of Hydrogen technology
to date - has suddenly decided it needs to get on board the EV train.
Secondly,
that Daimler says an alliance with Tesla allows an electric-mobility
future to be got to market much faster, because of the small, flexible,
quick-responding nature of a small company like Tesla. Daimler further
announced that by 2012 it would begin mass production of Smart EVs -
and make them available to regular customers (at present, Daimler and
Tesla are co-operating on a limited test fleet of Smarts). Mercedes
will also help Tesla with future vehicle development, and even supply
components in the future, the company said. More soon...
[This piece first appeared on BritsOnGreen - The Movement Design Bureau's new dedicated strand for green news and insight]
Last Thursday we interviewed Ford's Sue Cischke about the company's sustainability strategy. Then on Saturday we met design students in the DAAP (Department of Design, Architecture, Art & Planning) at The University of Cincinnati(UC). Two of those students - Amy Johannigman and Robb Hunter, now follow Dan Sturgesand Drew Smith in giving their views on what Sue said, and what Ford should do next. Over to Amy and Robb...
Sue has a great base of conversation. We loved that she dropped the “T” bomb (TRAIN!) right at the beginning. Her knowledge of Ford’s current sustainable facts and figures proved her credibility. The mention of a “Hub Concept” got us hopeful that Ford has big plans in this space.
But while she seems to be developing some models for Ford’s future, we would like the shape of these models to reflect more progressive shifts. Peter Drucker reminds us that "wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision".
We’ve three key points, and have represented each one graphically. We call them “Shapes for Sue”. The ideas they contain are explained in the text below each diagram.
1. Be a Game Changer
At a recent Designer’s Accord meeting in NYC, Allan Chochinov of Core77 said "we know too much not to design in a sustainable manner”. He’s right. The facts are in, and climate change has created a situation that is in urgent need of addressing. Sue's talk of "transitional changes" will not suffice, when one considers the magnitude of our problem. We need bold actions and strict practices from industry leaders.
We need to impress behavioral change within users to set firm attitudes and outcomes. Ford has the opportunity to be a "Game Changer" as P&G’s A.G. Lafley would say, and implement large scale shifts. Traditional business models would see Sue's prescribed strategy of "near-term, midterm, and long-term" solutions as smart. But these are strategies for a previous era - comfortable change rather than radical rebirth. If Ford claims to be an industry leader, it needs to step up, and differentiate itself as such. The danger is that the world is now changing much faster than Ford.
2. Mash-ups not Mix-tapes
Mash-ups are a current, popular form of music created by taking parts of many existing songs and overlapping, restructuring, and recreating them into an entirely new compilation. A mash-up creates a song from familiar parts but creates an entire new way of hearing it. Artist Greg Gillis (aka GirlTalk), may mix Pras's "Ghetto Superstar" and Yo La Tengo's "Autumn Sweater" all in less than 30 seconds. We think Ford should see this as an inspiration and analogy for creating industry partnerships. Currently, Ford’s partnerships feel more like a mix-tape, a mix of single tracks from different albums on one tape. Most of Sue’s discussion paints Ford as merely a hardware maker. Ford needs to reach out and begin partnerships that embrace service design, infrastructure change, mobile urban living. The possibilities are endless when we are open to creative, collaborative, non-traditional forms of ourselves.
3. Co-Creation
Sue spoke of Ford’s interest in current thought leaders and Industry conferences. It seems to be talking with many of the industry's tastemakers to make more informed decisions. The fact that Ford has created positions for sustainable strategy and social media are impressive in themselves. Yet while creating all these new positions and discussions, Ford seems to have forgotten the primary rule of ‘sales’: be a good listener. Ford’s product development models a collaborative inner-circle of new-age hybrid leadership. This model resembles a funnel and seems to focus more on "a perception’s game" as Scott Monty describes in a January 12, MDB interview than a receptive open-source model.
Traditional leadership models will not meet the pressing needs of our current economy, and climate change. We propose a co-creation model similar to the work of academic design researcher Liz Sanders, in her "Make-Tools" workshops. The idea of co-creation is not design by democracy, but rather design by listening. The advent of social media penetrates today's participatory culture in completely new ways - ones that are highly digestible by the public.
So come on Ford, let's cut the jargon, turn up our tweets and begin a real dialogue. One that's devoid of traditional marketing and watered down plans.
Amy Johannigman and Robb Hunter are both currently undergraduate students in the Department of Design,
Architecture, Art and Planning at The University of Cincinnati. Amy
majors in Product Design and has worked at The Ford Motor Company among
others, while Robb majors in Transportation Design and has worked at
Hasbro toys, DEKA and Intrago.
Both bring a multi-disciplinary approach to what they do - favouring collaborative processes over demarcated disciplines.
On Thursday we interviewed Ford's Sue Cischke about the company's sustainability strategy and put the interview online. Now we're gathering comment from key thinkers we know. First up was Dan Sturges, next comes Drew Smith, currently based in Germany working as a freelance design strategist for an automotive design strategy consultancy. He also runs the downsideupdesign blog. Over to Drew...
By way of introduction, during a live interview last night at the Fortune Brainstorm: GREEN conference, Bill Ford went on record saying “One thing I’ll tell you for sure: our ability to forecast has been just horrible.” He added that despite bringing in external advisors to help forecast three-to-five year market developments, the company “might as well have just tossed darts” given their lack of success in defining the future of the Ford. Apart from demonstrating a, frankly, shockingly short term view on Ford’s future, one other thing occurred to me: Ford is talking to the wrong people.
Comfort zone
Against this background, I was, in some measure, pleasantly surprised by what Sue presented in the interview. It showed that the company is at least cognisant of some of the longer-term (i.e more than five year) mobility issues that the company will increasingly be party to.
Sadly, however, there was little to quell my fear that there’s not much in the way of a strategic approach to defining a sustainable role for Ford as part of an sustainable mobility future.
Furthermore, evidence abounded that old-school business thinking continues to reign supreme in Dearborn. From choosing to partner with an oil company, BP, in devising future vehicle strategy because “...they know... the fuel side of the business, we know... the vehicle side of the business” to continuing to interface with the old guard of the business development networks, there’s a sense that Ford is sticking, largely, to it’s comfort zone.
Yet Sue goes on to say that it’s going to “...take a different mindset” for America to make the transition to smaller, more efficient cars and, in the longer term, to alternative modes of mobility. She never communicated, however, how a change in mindset, either Ford’s or America’s, might come about.
Sowing the seeds of change
The cultural climate, to my mind, has never been better for sowing the seeds of substantial change in the way societies relate to mobility. It’s clear, based on Bill’s comments and this interview, that if Ford wants to participate in, and profit from this moment, they need to start talking to a different group of advisors. Now.
From an American perspective, issues surrounding energy independence, environmental degradation and the collapse of the credit markets (with the resultant modification of consumer values), provide the right environment for a visionary car company to take the lead in presenting an alternative, more sustainable transport future. Importantly, the American political leadership is in a responsive, supportive frame of mind too.
"I can’t help thinking that Ford would do well to stop seeing themselves simply as a
producer of cars and more as an active component in a sustainable
mobility future."
Creating a vision, taking it public
Imagine the possibilities if Ford sat down with the real thought leaders in sustainability (I include in this group anthropologists, designers, design strategists and urban planners among others) and developed a wide-ranging, flexible series of options for sustainable mobility in urban and suburban areas. Then, through a document/movie/multimedia extravaganza (Scott Monty could define the form), picture Ford taking this vision to the public.
On the one hand, the event would act as the touch point for opening up grass-roots community discussion about how we would like our lives to be lived in relation to cars and the urban environment.
More importantly the discussions would provide feedback and an opportunity for in-depth study of how the culture surrounding mobility is changing at the end-user level on a local scale.
It’s not as if the idea of going public with a broad vision of the future is unprecedented in the car industry. The GM Motoramas that ran from ’49 to ’61 sold an entire nation of eager consumers the idea of expressing themselves through how they moved from place to place. Ford could do the same to usher in a new age of sustainable mobility and, as a bonus, get themselves truly back in touch with the consumer, a vital relationship that the Big Three have squandered over the last 30 years.
For Ford to attain global relevance as a mobility provider, and for their products to dovetail elegantly with local transport infrastructures, the company needs to provide solutions that are at least regionally and, ideally, locally appropriate, assembled close to their final destination. This is a concept that Gordon Murray is already working towards with his T25 small car.
Ford: Think beyond the product, think entire ecosystem
Needless to say, this shift towards system thinking is risky for Ford because, as Sue said “..systems aren’t our core business, cars are”. But systems, beyond computer and OS, weren’t Apple’s core business either. Yet from the introduction of the iPod in 2001, via the opening of the iTunes Music Store in 2003 to becoming the world’s most popular online music and movie store, Apple transitioned from simply selling a product to providing the entire, highly profitable ecosystem.
At one point during the interview, Sue talks about the shift in environmental discourse from a binary, “black and white” approach to a more nuanced, “middle ground” view. I can’t help thinking that Ford would do well to undergo a similar shift in their thinking so that they stop seeing themselves simply as a producer of cars and more as an active component in a sustainable mobility future.
Drew lives in Frankfurt, Germany but originally hails from Australia. He holds a degree in Industrial Design from The University of Technology in Sydney, and a Masters Degree in Automotive Design from Coventry University - one of the world's premier automotive design colleges. He was recently named as one of Design Droplets top 10 industrial designers to follow on twitter. You can check out his profile here.
If you want to get to know more about how we work, here's an insight into the questions we're asking as we explore what can happen next in transportation. What are the new business models? How will young people use cars? And more.
Here I talk to Joe Simpson onboard UA949, a 767-300 somewhere over the North Atlantic between London and Chicago on 15 April 2009. Joe sets out the questions he has that he wants to examine while we're in Detroit for a week.
Mark Charmer is founder of The Movement Design Bureau.
On Thursday we interviewed Ford's Sue Cischke about the company's sustainability strategy and put the interview online. Now we're gathering comment from key thinkers we know. Here's Dan Sturges, president of Intrago Mobility. Over to Dan...
I think Ford is a typical company that would communicate sustainability issues to engineering teams, design teams, sourcing people, etc.. I would bet that 85% of Ford's employees do not get a view over the "dashboard" - the view she or Bill Ford see of this complex new emerging mobility + access landscape un-folding. Sure the employees hear they should recycle their paper, fill their tires with air, etc.. But not about bold new vehicle sharing business models - Robin Chase talking about open-source transponders for every car and any car can be a rental car - how iPhones can make any car into a taxi (or so many other developments). Unfortunately for Ford employees they don't get to see all that is possible, but may get laid off because those who see what is ahead too often don't know what to do about it.
I think Ford should have an intranet site for their people that shares these bold new possibilities - to every employee that wants to look + learn. Why not let even a janitor at their St. Louis plant see what's happening. Perhaps he has some cool idea for a business offering seniors rides in mini-ev shuttles around his community. While Ford should really have a VC arm for employees starting new ventures - even if they didn't - it would be an important service to someone you might have to layoff at somepoint - to have a better sense of what the future of transpo might be and opportunities for them beyond Ford. Most likely, this type of creatve collaboration with 100% of your employees would bring amazing ideas to the business as well as a lot more happy excited "employees".
So, no, I think Sue and I have a very different idea as to who should be involved in sustainability at Ford.
Here are some things for me that stood out:
1) Vehicle Microrental.
Sue Cischke seemed to know more about the Zipcar business model than I had expected – about how consumers would have more choice in vehicles by moving past the ownership model, to instead match mode to trip.
This made me think that a Ford announcement in car-sharing might not be too far away. Perhaps they'll make an investment into Zipcar, or help a few Ford dealers test a “Flexible Lease” approach where a consumer’s car can be exchanged on the fly for another type of Ford car or truck at the nearby Dealer's lot. If this is true, and Ford will put their foot in the car-share pond, how odd it will be that they sold Hertz only 4 years ago. So much for the “vision thing”!
2) Mega City Mobility HUBS.
Sue said their work in the mega cities was not their core competency, but they were bringing IT to consumers in cities regarding transpo choices. Oddly, with 80% of Americans not able to get to or from public transit with ease, why not bring the Hub Concept to USA? Allow communities that need to match personal mobility with existing and new transit options to meet at the Community Mobility Hub? Why study Hubs with no connection to personal mobility in South America or India?
3) Small Car Safety.
Why do we never hear about how car companies are working with communities and cities to leverage IT to really reduce the chance of big and large vehicles hitting each other? Making travel in local communities like traveling in a boat is a Safe Harbor. Most of the tech she talks about is for freeway travel. But why not make it so small vehicles for community or urban travel are less likely to hit? We don’t design planes with bumpers, we make it so they won't hit.
4) Custom Solutions.
She said they make a car different for the Europe from the USA. But why not make these "local cars" I've mentioned - in a shape that's right for the Midwest or the Southwest? We tooled up the first Neighborhood Electric Vehicle for $1M. Now that fleet (of 50,000 NEVs) generates around 80 million one-way zero-emission trips a year in the USA! The digital revolution is poised to change the way we travel, as well as how we DESIGN, MAKE, and SELL this future. Ford just doesn’t think all that differently.
5) Working with others.
Yes they do, but the right groups? I don’t see any intent to really find the true disruptive thinkers in the space. I lived in Ann Arbor and heard all of the intent, but never saw it lead to the right folks.
I guess this last point relates to one of the first thing Sue said - that her job was to get the sustainability message to the right people in the company. I think there is likely a big difference between who she and I think are the "right" people.
Dan is based in Boulder, Colorado and designed the G.E.M, still to date the world's best selling EV. He is widely recognised as one of the world's leading evangelists for new vehicle and mobility concepts.
