Re*Move

Post consumerism? A crisis in design, a crisis of ethics: a time for change

I just got married. Hence have been away for a while, and why the lack of posts. It's not unknown for such activities to cause people to reassess their priorities, and begin to question stuff they previously took for granted. So, this could just be me. Yet I sense something is in the air. Something feels different...

Take the election in the uk right now. The media-spun forgone conclusion we began the campaign with has been thrown open by a number of things, including a TV debate which shook-up the status quo. Every day, social media channels are exposing the bias and vested interests of traditional publications and big business. The entire event feel not only more open, but exciting, and 'different this time'. As Gordon Brown discovered yesterday, you are never 'off record' anymore. And in all of this, among the optimists such as your author, there's a sense that we - the people - can make a difference. Our say somehow feels like it 'matters more' this time.

Then take the auto show in Beijing last week. The western auto companies unveiled products that whispered of a sense of relief. The crisis is over, and now China's growing auto market will allow them to simply continue as they were, thanks very much. Ford, at least, showed a city car. Yet I haven't found many people who are impressed with Mercedes' vulgar - and dubiously dubbed - 'shooting brake concept'. Or anyone who actually needs, or cares about the BMW Gran Coupe concept. And while many were still busy laughing at Chinese 'copies' of western models, those who stood back saw a set of Chinese car designs that had a level of genuine credibility that was unthinkable just two years ago. Some even noticed the Chinese Government initiatives, and the impacts they are having on development of Chinese electric cars, which could have some interesting consequences for the old guard. Better Place gained a foothold in the world's largest country - despite being increasingly poo-pooed by some in the developed world, but Chinese firms are developing similar charging infrastructure plans of their own...

There's a sense that the more switched on people are looking, scrutinising, and questioning the status quo more than ever before. It's apparent in design and design criticism as much as anywhere else. Ultimately, the very role of the designer is being questioned. While this may be somewhat frightening, it at least means we may be moving to the next stage of the debate, beyond dubious tick-box, shiny apple-green sustainability. Rather than become all preachy, the main point of this piece therefore, is to draw your attention to a series of important articles and events reflective of this new, deeper line of questioning. If you're a designer, or design student, I'd argue they're required reading...

The underlying contention they all make, is that many designers are - far from making things in the world better - complicit in simply encouraging people to consume at an ever growing rate - messing up peoples' heads, and screwing the planet in the process. So what role for the designer?

Core 77's Allan Chochinov perhaps framed this most eloquently some time ago, in his 1000 word manifesto for sustainability in design. Now a couple of years old, it nonetheless still resonates and provides a useful starting point. More recently, Munich professor Peter Naumann's "Restarting car design" looks set to become a seminal piece, and is one all students of transport design need to read. Judging by the shock-waves it has generated, and the response to it from those I've spoken to in the auto, design and education sectors, he has hit the nail on the head. Because increasingly, it isn't just industry that's in the firing line, but design education institutions that are being questioned. For its part, the Royal College of Art is currently hosting the "Vehicle Design Sessions". There have been two so far, and both have touched on the areas I'm discussing. As Drew Smith's write-up chronicles, the panelists at the first - sustainability focused - debate, were unanimous in their view that vehicle design students should now look outside of the established industry if they were truly intent on using their design skills to have real impact in the world. Perhaps not what you'd expect from an event held at one of the world's leading vehicle design courses.

For those students of design interested in more than just the design of the next sports car, all of this raises a dilemma. How do you balance the necessity to find employment and money, without simply tramping up a well-trodden path, or falling into big-industry - pandering to whims and being emasculated from affecting meaningful change?

I doubt many will find that quandary any simpler after reading Carl Acampado's piece, but it's a necessary read nonetheless. Entitled  "The product designer's dilemma", it is bound to strike a chord with many of its readers. Acampado touches on the conflicts that the average designer - and indeed typical consumer - today faces in balancing personal desires, ambition and personal success, with the best way not to fuck up the planet. It's an impassioned piece, and just like your author here, Acampado has no real silver bullet solution to many of these problems. Yet his "dog for life/do it with love" message resonates loudly, and without wanting to sound all soppy, could be an interesting mantra to apply both as a consumer and in whatever area of design you practice. Please read the piece to see for yourself what I mean, if you haven't already. It echoes the voice of many of those I have mentioned above, and contrasts starkly with the PR-spun froth that consumers are (hopefully) growing increasingly sick off, yet which nonethelesss still dominates media 'opinion' that we are bombarded with every day. Stuff that I might add, is now the domain of much online green media, not just the likes of auto.

A final point. "Drive less. Save more" proclaims the title of the most recent email to land in my inbox, which is from the Energy Saving Trust - a UK Government sustainability body. In terms of missing the point completely, yet perfectly representing a very particular 'old way' of thinking that I'm taking issue with, I can't help thinking that it sums things up rather neatly. New approaches are needed. Thoughts on a postcard please... or alternately in the comments box below.

Image credit: "Consumption reflected" - Zohar Manor-Abel on flickr

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 29th April 2009. Full disclosure: Joseph Simpson is a visiting lecturer in Vehicle Design at The Royal College of Art. The thoughts expressed here are his own, and in no way necessarily reflect the views of the Vehicle Design Department or the wider College.

Driving the change: Renault and the pitfalls of marketing electric cars

I spent the back end of last week in Portugal, and while the trip was nothing to do with work ostensibly, I couldn’t help noticing that Lisbon appears to be the one place in Europe where Renault has succeeded in selling the new Megane in significant numbers.

That observation alludes to an altogether bigger storm in a teacup that’s been blowing around Renault since the Frankfurt auto show last September. Back then, you’ll remember that Carlos Ghosn effectively bet the future of the entire company on EVs taking off in a big way – the company unveiling four electric vehicle concepts which will be put into production from next year.

Renault's Twizy concept from IAA Frankfurt 2009 - a concept it has susequently advertised extensively.

That move surprised a normally conservative car industry. What’s surprised more since Frankfurt though, is that Renault’s advertising campaign has been dominated by the four concepts and the whole zero emission (“Z.E.” in Renault speak) concept – rather more so than its mainstream Clio, Megane, Scenic and Laguna models. They’ve even been running a rather sickly TV advert featuring a rather serious voice-over and heart-string plucking Keane sound track, which Robin Brown neatly pointed out, managed to make a genuinely innovative, radical strategy look like green-washing (see it below):

Above: Renault's "Drive the change" advert

If you’re flying in Europe at the moment, you’ll probably have noticed the campaign, too. It’s called “Drive the change”. Renault appear to have bought a lot of airport advertising space in Europe’s key hubs to highlight their plan – so, on Thursday, the first thing that greeted me in arrivals at Lisbon was a giant Twizy advert. Now, according to Steve Cropley’s column in this week’s Autocar magazine, Renault – and Ghosn – are under fire in the French press for focusing too much on these electric models that are still two years away, and hurting sales of the current range

Italian ZE advert, and a Drive the Change advert on the back of a car magazine

This rather neatly illustrates some of the issues car makers are going to face as they provide (and governments encourage) a move to an increasingly electrified automotive fleet. With the average man on the street probably still skeptical about climate change, and perception – in a country such as the UK – of the EV being rooted in the milkfloat, how does a company raise awareness of, and ‘market’, forthcoming electric cars? Are conventional methods going to work? Perhaps not.

Not only that, but from the perspective of the car maker’s financial health, there’s a need to continue squeezing every last drop of revenue from current ranges (and by inference, the internal combustion engine), which is difficult, while also trying to convince people that EVs are the way forward and you’re leading the way in green initiatives.

There’s no one obvious solution to overcoming such headaches; Renault is just the first to face this problem, and it certainly won’t be the last. However, I suspect we’ll see a diverse set of approaches to marketing new powertrains, which broaden the current toolbox of approaches.

There is however, one approach currently employed today, which feels even more tailored made for helping the public understand the benefits, and 'believe in' EVs. For years, car makers have pushed cars into rental fleets – primarily to ease over-supply, and help boost registration (ie sales) numbers. But a known, acknowledged benefit is that as lots of people get exposure to your models, and are (hopefully) impressed by them, the model in question makes a strong enough impression that next time they’re in the market to buy a new car, that car goes on the shortlist, and potentially ends up being converted into a sale for the car maker.

Clearly, Renault’s alliance partner and leader-elect in the electric vehicle world - Nissan – can see the value of such an approach, because last week they announced a deal with rental car company Hertz, who will rent the forthcoming Leaf from 2012 in Europe and the US. It looks like a smart, and obvious move for both parties. The chance to truly try before you buy – and perhaps spend a couple of days with an EV, outside of the confines and limitations of the dealership sales network, is surely a key tool in convincing both the sceptical and the curious that an EV is actually what they want to buy. Drive the change, as Renault would say.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 22nd February 2010.

"If I'd asked people what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." *

* 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.

Mad Men won't save Ford

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.

This quote from an awesome Clay Shirky article earlier this year (about newspapers but don't worry about that) says why this is flawed, better than I ever can:

"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."

Unless we get something better - unless we get genuinely great marketing - Ford faces slow decline. It's a long time since the ad guys alone could create a winning product.

Mark Charmer is founder of the Movement Design Bureau. Related reading:

The future of cars. Please? (December 2007)

Three New Shapes for Ford (April 2009)

Sue Cischke meet Dan Sturges. (April 2009)

Drew Smith on the car industry's failure to "do digital". (May 2009)

Fast charging EV batteries and the future of the fuel station

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:

Burning Rubber - What future for cars?

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.

It's been organised with Greenbang and the University of Bath. Joe and I have already been doing research for Greenbang - here's Ford's Nancy Gioia talking mass market electric vehicle with us in Detroit back in April.

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.

Posted by Mark Charmer on 29th September 2009

Frankfurt in four minutes - IAA 2009 review video

Frankfurt auto show is so huge that, even having spent three days there, it's hard to cover everything that's in the halls of the Messe. So here's a fairly personalised view of the 2009 Frankfurt auto show, edited into just four minutes. There are things in here that will doubtless seem strange to you, and there are plenty of interesting things missing - simply becasue I didn't get time to video them, but hopefully you'll enjoy and get a flavour of what it was like to be there. Note, if you click through and run this in Youtube, you can watch it in HD too.

Just in case you watched it and are intrigued as to what certain things are, then in rough order from the top that was:

BMW's Vision Efficient Dynamics concept, The Mercedes Gullwing (nee SLS), the original Smart concept from 1994, Aston's Rapide, Ford of Europe's CEO John Fleming, Renault Nissan CEO Carlos Gohsn, the Renault Twizy, Joe Paluska of Better Place, Better Place's battery swap system, Mini's (loud) birthday celebrations, details of various cars  and concepts - BMW, Citroen, Renault, Aston, the fold away seat in the Ford Grand C-Max, Mark getting annoyed at being filmed, Stefan Lamm - Ford of Europe's exterior design director, talking about touch screen HMI influences, BMW's touch screen concept Apps store, the HMI in the Hyundai iX Metro concept, and finally Drew Smith enjoying saving the environment...

More video and thoughts from Frankfurt are on their way. Check back soon...

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 18th September 2009

Images of Frankfurt

I spent just one day at the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show and barely covered more than a couple of halls. But here's the stuff I saw that interested me. Click on the collage below or here.

Press day. Frankfurt Auto Show. 15 September 2009.

Posted by Mark Charmer. Mark is managing director of The Movement Design Bureau.

John Fleming - CEO Ford of Europe, talks technology & EVs

Watch John Fleming - Ford's CEO intoduce the company's green technology plans at the IAA in Frankfurt. Like nearly every other major car maker, Ford was focusing on green - as you can see, this is what they opened the show with.

The headline stories were a battery electric version of the European Focus - once again, using a powertrain built by Magna (the ones who just bought Opel and Vauxhall off GM). Then there was the unveiling of EcoBoost - in 1.6l, and 2.0l four cylinder format. EcoBoost is a new design of petrol engine that gives more grunt with less cylinders and cc. We saw and drove the V6 version in the Lincoln MKS and Ford Flex recently. Finally, there was a fitter, sharper Focus Econetic, featuring technology like stop-start, bringing the CO2 down to 99g/km.

It says a lot about the pace of movement in the car industry right now that what might have been an impressive set of annoucements just six months or a year ago, seems comparatively pedestrian when held up against other manufacturers at the show. Most German firms have gone "stop-start", with smart alternators and low-rolling resistance tyres to boot, some time ago. And shortly after the end of this press conference, Renault pretty much hung their corporate future on the electric "Z.E." (zero emission) vehicle - unveiling four concepts, and saying it was committed, in a very big way, to the technology. 

Follow us in Frankfurt - IAA 2009 on Re*Move

The Re*Move team decamps to Frankfurt this week, as we’re covering the International Auto show (IAA) which starts tomorrow. So that you don’t have to blister your feet, we’ll be trudging round the messe’s vast halls – covering the important announcement and vehicle launches, asking the tricky questions and generally shoving cameras where others tend not to shove them.

Primarily, we’re there as part of our ongoing work with Ford – and we’ll be looking closely to see whether there’s been any progress with Ford’s electrification strategy. We’ll also be closely examining the new C-Max, a European c-segment MPV, but one which signifies the look of the new Focus family, a car which will be launched in all of Ford’s major markets including North America.

Ford Grand C-Max images leaked out last week...previews direction of world Focus

Elsewhere, we’re itching to find out what Renault’s four (yes, four) EVs look and feel like, and will be paying particularly close attention to the tiniest member of the quartet you see in this plan-view picture. Has La Regie seen the value in the personal-mobility future city market? And is it going after BMW’s project i and Toyota’s i-Series vehicles? We’ll find out.

Renault's four EVs for Frankfurt, from the top. We're most interested in the far left...

Sticking with the Renault connection, we’ll also be talking to the team from Better Place to find out how their electric car-charging network and battery swap-station plans are progressing. We’re also keen to learn more about BMW’s Vision Efficient Dynamics concept. It’s important because it’s positioning green technology, and green branding as a flagship idea which is synonymous with premium. BMW’s efficient dynamics programme has impressed us in the past, but it’s decision to make Project I vehicles a premium sell, and its recently launched ‘Joy’ brand campaign have left us flat. Where does Vision ED fit in?

Aside from that, we’re keen to field questions from the watching world. If there’s anything that’s bugging you in terms of news coming from the show, anyone you want us to try and grab, or something you’re particularly interested in, get in touch – and we’ll do our best to cover it.

Don’t forget all Re*Move material is creative commons licensed, so you can reuse and incorporate our words, photos and videos in your own publications. And if you want the intravenous feed of info, follow our twitter streams - @JoeSimpson and @Charmermrk (we’d also recommend @Drewpasmith, @carnorama, @ericgallina and @skymotoring if you’re watching on twitter), and we’re using the hashtag #IAATweetup along the way on twitter, and for our alternative designer/after show party on Tuesday night, which - we should point out - if you're in town, you don't need a VIP invite to get in to.... Here on Re*Move, all the material will be tagged Frankfurt. So sit back, stay tuned, and do feel free to comment or connect and ask us about what's going on. Tshuss!

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 14th September 2009, Frankfurt Messe picture - Mattingham on Flickr, Ford C-max - Ford, Renault EV - Renault (via autoblog)