Re*Move

Geneva auto show 2010 - some things you might have missed...

By now, you'll no doubt have read all about the cars and concepts that you were interested in at last week's Geneva auto show. But if you've still apetite to digest and cogitate, Drew Smith - of the Downsideupdesign blog - and myself are producing a two part podcast with pics to cover all of the major production debuts and concepts, which you'll be able to see/hear in the next few days. For now though, you might be interested in some of the details, elements and irreverant bits and bats that I noticed in the Palexpo last week. So without further ado...

Citroen reimagined the ReVolt from Frankfurt as a racer for the road in the form of the SurVolt (above). Only Citroen could get away with painting it gloss blue, matte grey, pink and orange. But they did. Note these graphics - they were quite fun, a play on PCBs - used to signify the electric drivetrain.

Meanwhile over at Mercedes (above), they'd got wood... (sorry, couldn't resist). The use of wood laminates in this interior was fantastic - it vied with the Pegueot (see below) for concept interior of the show, and previews an altogether more 'light of touch' future Mercedes interior design language...

Peugeot marked its return to form with the SR1 (although special note to the glorious bike also on the stand) - which previews the brand's altogether more acceptable new face (thank god the rictus grin's gone). But it was the interior that really stood out in this car...great work Julien et al:

Speaking of gorgeous things, here's a shot of the superb little Pininfarina Alfa Duettotanta that makes me go a little bit weak at the knees...

Poundbury - an essay in how not to design a new town

Poundbury is Prince Charles' 'exemplar' urban environment, built on the edge of Dorset's county town, Dorchester - in the UK. It is held up in some planning and design circles as a template for how we should design future towns, and in other circles it is ridiculed. As some of our contacts have been discussing it online in the last few days, I thought it would be appropriate to publish my perspective, in the form of a re-worked extract from my 2008 Royal College of Art Thesis - "The future of the car in the city". The short essay follows:

Above: Pounbury streetscape - as seen from the green

Introduction

“It resembled an ancient relative to whom one was very close as a child, but who lacked any understanding of the adult whom circumstances had in the interim formed, whether for better or worse.”

Alain De Botton’s withering description of Poundbury village – a recent extension to the town of Dorchester in Dorset, is typical of those made by both mainstream and architectural media following the opening of Prince Charles’s ‘model’ town.

For many it is purely the architectural form that proves to be Poundbury’s undoing, but the most interesting aspect of this place – and what makes it a worthwhile study, is its urban design principles and attitude towards the car - both in terms of the theories and ideologies its designers used, and in the physical manifestation of the place itself.

Background and history

Poundbury exists today primarily thanks to HRH Prince Charles – the Duchy of Cornwall. His views on architecture, and how in turn the architecture profession has received this, can be read elsewhere. What specifically interested me was that Poundbury’s “…entire masterplan was based upon placing the pedestrian, and not the car, at the centre of the design.” To understand the relevance of Poundbury when considering the relationship between urban environments and the car, it is necessary though, not to focus on Poundbury’s visionary Prince Charles, but Leon Krier – Charles’s masterplanner, and New Urbanist.

Krier’s book – ‘Architecture: choice or fate?’ – sets out the principles that form the basis of New Urbanist theory which he employs at Poundbury. Not a fan of large, modern, metropolitan cities – he argues that they develop in problematic ways – nor Suburban sprawl, Krier instead suggests a model of ‘the city within the city’. These are smaller urban villages, situated close to one another, yet that don’t physically connect. The intention is to “re-establish a precise dialectic between city and countryside.”

Poundbury embodies these ideals, situated approximately two kilometers from the heart of Dorchester town centre. In between the two is a less dense, greener, urban ‘strip’. The place is split into four quarters, being built in phases (currently only phases one and two have been completed). Each quarter comprises it’s own mini-centre - a square intended as a focal point, for people, rather than cars.

Above: Pounbury schematic layout in relation to Dorchester, as I see it

Experience

Yet visiting Poundbury and observing how people actually live there, reveals deep flaws in Krier and Charles’ model. Poundbury feels like a village that has not yet been through the industrial revolution – yet (paradoxically) it feels dominated by the car. The central squares are not ‘people’ places - they are car parks. The streets around them are deserted of both people and vehicles. Ultimately, you discover the cars have been shoved out of the way, into back alley muses containing nothing but garages, eating up acres of space. The result is that both streets and courtyards are devoid of life and feel soulless.

Walking through Poundbury is analogous to Jim Carey’s chatacter in the Truman show. Life feels somewhat fake. In part, this is unsurprising - The Truman show was based on and filmed in Seaside, Florida which was designed by the ‘fathers’ of New Urbanism – Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and a place which Krier speaks about enthusiastically in his book.

Ultimately, despite being planned as “…a high-density urban quarter of Dorchester which gives priority to people, rather than cars, and where commercial buildings are mixed with residential areas, shops and leisure facilities to create a walkable community”, Poundbury’s fails in three key areas, expanded upon below:

• Services

Richard Rogers argues that for a place to be truly ‘walkable’ one needs the ability to work, live, play, (by inference meet people, eat, shop, entertain and be entertained) within the same (1 mile or so?) area. Although Poundbury was developed as a mixed-use community, as one might expect, many of the people who live there do not work here, and vice-versa. Likewise, the keystone services and amenities taken for granted in cities and towns - the supermarket, cafes, bars, a cinema, restaurants, educational and academic institutions, gyms, theatres, a take-away, a library or bookshop – simply do not exist in Poundbury. Poundbury has a high end hi-fi store, three wedding and bridal shops, and a ‘Budgens’ mini-mart shop masquerading as “Poundbury Village Stores”. Bluntly, being denied the amenities modern people and modern life require, strangulates Poundbury.

• Accessibility

If the designers had truly wanted the residents of Poundbury to use their cars less, then would it not have been more pertinent to explore and create better links, pathways and services between two of the places which Poundbury residents might most frequently be predicted to need access – Dorchester and the nearby Tesco’s supermarket? The supermarket sits only 1.4 km away as the crow flies (fig.26), but there is no path, no route for pedestrians, or other vehicles - so almost everyone drives there, as the supermarket is just around the ring road. Dorchester itself is 1.6 km from Poundbury’s central square. These distances (around 1 mile), equate to around 20 minutes walking time - too great a distance and time to prevent time-pressed people from using their cars. Alternatives options to jumping in the car are needed, and they are notable by their absence.

Above: an annotated aerial view of Poundbury with key landmarks and POIs in Dorchester marked

• Parking and streetscape

This area is the one Poundbury comes closest to getting right. However, some short-sighted ideas, and odd implementation, create issues. Krier is right for suggesting, “The speed of vehicles should be controlled not by signs and technical gadgets (humps, traffic islands, crash barriers, traffic lights, etc.) but by civic and urban character of streets that is created by their geometric configuration, their profile, paving, planting, lighting, street furniture, and architecture.”

Yet somewhere between drawing board and physicality, things have gone wrong. Poundbury does feature narrow, winding streets with ‘dropped kerbs’ that seem to discourage cars drivers from traveling particularly quickly. At the same time however, its lack of real hierarchy and distinction in building types – and the apparent desire to completely remove street signage, or implement any technology – means that the place does, to use his words about certain other places “demonstrate [its] unique capacity to disorientate, confuse…” Poundbury isn’t readable; it isn’t legible to an outsider.

Parking is worse still. The overarching desire to maintain ‘order’ – for everything, including the car – and to be neat and tidy, seems to have created issues when it comes to dealing with where to put stationary vehicles, and how much space they are allowed. Vast parking mews at the rear of houses tends to keep vehicles off the main road, but the benefit of this is questionable. The garage mews take up enormous space in the areas behind houses, occupying huge tracts of land that in ‘real’ cities simply isn’t there. Squares and courtyards have no focus, no life, and where there is some focus like a shop, simply become car parks.

 Above: one of the many garage mews, which take up acerages of space in Poundbury

If the intention was to put pedestrians (or even cyclists and other small vehicles) first, Poundbury might have looked at employing the incredibly successful ‘Woonerf’ system seen in Holland – which limit the space for cars on residential streets – and makes the street-spaces vibrant, safe environments in which children can - and do - play. Might it not have been better to move the cars out to two, maybe three main ‘areas’ on the edge of the development? But then this would raise the prospect of creating multi-story car parks, which Krier criticizes for little good reason, but at great length, in what he has written.

Conclusion

Poundbury is an interesting example of an attempt to build a new development in the early twenty-first century. Objectively, its failure is not down to the plain-to-see distaste for modern, nee modernist architecture which its facades embody, and for which it is most commonly criticised. Instead it is the failure to provide any vision or any excitement, about how the future of urban environments might be, and how people and vehicles might move around and share space, that disappoints most. Worryingly, for a place that is intended as a counterpoint to sprawl and overcoming car dependency, Poundbury provides little in the way of a blueprint for how things could be done.

It is also a lesson in why not to look at mobility as only being about cars, and why a creeping agenda of discouraging or limiting movement and mobility could be dangerous. Should others try to ape Poundbury’s developers, they too risk becoming preoccupied with trying to create well meaning solutions that don’t take into account the needs and desires of modern lives. One hope that if future developments try to counteract the car and its impact, they don’t forget about other forms of private mobility, which can complement or repurpose traditional cars. Sadly, for all the anti-car bluster, there is not a hint of a cycle lane, a bike park, a PRT system, a car-share scheme or a Segway to be found here.

An opportunity has been missed here, because of a refusal to embrace and experiment with new ideas, technologies, and products. This place could, and should have been an exemplar or a test bed in how we might live and move in the future. Instead, what best encapsulates the failures of Poundbury is this: its inhabitants appear condemned to a life on Dorchester’s ringroad, traveling to a big-box Tesco’s store, built on a greenfield site, in a car that weighs twenty times their weight, and typically has three empty seats.

One can only hope that those tasked with helping shape future towns and cities - both in the UK and abroad - who are now bussed to this place to ‘learn’ from it as some kind of example, recognise its failures and don’t condemn the inhabitants of their future towns to the same fate.

Published by Joseph Simpson on 17th February 2010

Some notes and information on this piece:

This piece is an adaptation from part of Joseph Simpson's Thesis "The future of the car in the city" - Royal College of Art, June 2008. A full set of references for this piece are available on request, but are not included here in our usual hyperlink fashion as they mainly refer to offline sources.

The piece is not creative commons licensed in the way our usual pieces are, as it is sibject to some copy right from The Royal College of Art. Please contact me if you would like to use or reference it so that I can grant permission. A copy of the original piece in pdf format is available on request.

Joseph Simpson visited Poundbury in October 2007

Five Trends for the Tens

There are some really important changes going on that will shape the process of designing cities, and how we move and interact in them, over the next decade. Here's Mark's shortlist:

1. Huge cuts and a focus on the essential

Everyone - from entrepreneurs to public administrators, needs to adapt to a world where innovation "culture" is no longer focused around the bleeding edge, the piece of the economy that is the "growth" market. Instead, the most important innovation will focus on achieving dramatic cost savings or improvements in the usefulness of essential services - stuff that absolutely has to happen, rather than 'nice to haves'. In other words, the target market will be the "decline" market. Don't be scared. This is surprisingly good news, because we'll focus on solving big problems, instead of peripheral ones.

2. The gulf between skills and jobs

While today's corporates and governments meet at "Cloud Computing" conferences to debate how to put their boring, dated processes online in new ways, a new generation of digitally-empowered workers is approaching over the hill. These people need jobs, and already have, on their own laptops, far more flexible, powerful, communicative tools than almost anything that exists in the firms they're applying to work for. The result is going to be a crisis - new skills and new tools that many firms will resist adopting until it's too late. Young people will be hired into environments, start using 'enterprise' systems, and conclude that everything is lame. Successful firms (and governments) will attract the talent, harness these people and embrace the constantly evolving set of tools these people bring for themselves.

3. Big office space becomes obsolete

We all need somewhere to work - but what most organisations don't need is large buildings with big reception areas and "working" floors packed with desks and computer workstations. Yet today, the office is the definition of modern business and modern cities. This is about to change. Expect great confusion as developers and property owners resist the change (and the resulting fall in building values), while others see the opportunity to create larger, more flexible living and working spaces, possibly made available in completely new ways. You'll also see networks of people who came together digitally move into physical environments for the first time, in a big way. This will be exciting. Remember, New York lofts used to be warehouses and factories. Throughout history, new communication networks, from ships to railways to cars, have always led to the creation of new physical communities built because of them.

4. Consumerism in crisis

This one deserves two paragraphs. A couple of questions will dominate debate over the next few years. Will we expand or reduce the gap between rich and poor? Is a society whose wealth is measured based on the production and consumption of things, or the manipulation of their on-paper value, actually sustainable (economically, not just in terms of resources).

The dramatically changing ability of people to share what they do and think has the potential to reshape the way we decide what to buy, and how we articulate the experience of using those things. We're not saying you won't buy stuff - it just won't be the same hierarchy as it's been for decades. As the ripples from the financial crisis continue, fundamental questions about what wealth is, what it means, and how it should be demonstrated, will make for an interesting era. Notions of ownership have been in flux ever since most people stopped buying music, as an object to own. In an era when an iPhone is now a more useful, cheaper, social vehicle than a Ford Fiesta for many (especially young) people, an "Apps" culture means we are likely to buy lots more virtual stuff, rooted in software, where the emphasis is on doing rather than just having. The authenticity of objects, and the connections and associations they imply, is also likely to become ever more important.

5. Open versus closed

London's teenagers are likely all by themselves to generate and organise far more data than London's public authorities will over the next ten years. As the power of open source collaboration stretches beyond software, as the masses rush to share updates, pictures, and video of what they're doing and what they think, we're going to hit some nasty issues. These might be about security, privacy, lifestyle, even thought. But a lot of them will be about people defending existing approaches, who seek to undermine and discredit those who believe that by sharing ideas, knowledge and resources, we can create more wealth and better cities. Watch this space.

Joe and I would love to talk to people who have views on any of this. Bounce us a note, leave a comment, or please share this with others who may be interested. If you're in London, drop by and we'll film your comments. Or if you want to write a nice guest blog, we'll post it.

Mark Charmer is a researcher at The Movement Design Bureau. He's also a co-founder of Akvo.

Mitch Altman on The Magic of Open Design

We've said before and we'll say again, open, networked forms of design and collaboration are going to change how we solve many problems. They'll also shape the future of our cities, towns and villages, how we work in them, the ways we move and interact in them, the vehicles we design and the way they fit together.

Some of this is about cost - build something once, openly and others can improve it. But much of it is about the culture of open source designers and problem solvers.

Here I talk with San Francisco-based virtual reality and hacker god Mitch Altman, inventor of, amongst other things TV-B-Gone, and Vinay Gupta, open source hardware guru and inventor of the Hexayurt open source refugee shelter.

I ask whether these new networks of designers – often in the form of hackers or open source communities - spend too much time focused on arguing about the need to break down existing structures. Is there more happening beyond that? What can those networks be doing now – to create real value? Do hackers and open source networks have an identity and meaning that can defined by what they are, rather than what they aren't?

I also ask whether the hacker scene has started to build its own financial infrastructure yet?

Design Museum, Butler's Wharf, London. 9 July 2009.

Posted by Mark Charmer.

Honda Insight: photographic design review

Honda's Insight left the official Movement Design Bureau parking space (alright, the road outside the office) just over a week ago now, so having produced this light-hearted video review towards the end of its time with us, we've now had the chance to think about the car a little longer. Our lasting impression? A total bag of contradictions.

The Insight is at once both deeply impressive and yet slightly disappointing. Why? In short, because Honda has managed to wrap apparently smart, up-to-the-minute technology in a package that's both easy to live with, fine to drive and affordable for the average c-segment (think Golf, Focus) car buyer. Yet at the same time, that technology failed to deliver real world results in our hands, and out of a town environment, the Insight feels out of its depth - leaving us questioning the point of that slippery, low-drag 'kamm-tail' shape and the packaging compromises it has created elsewhere in the car.

We're going to explore some of the innovative thinking behind the Insight, and Honda's overall future strategy in a forthcoming blog, which will feature the interview we did with Honda UK's head of environment and government affairs - John Kingston - while we had the Insight.

But for now, we felt it worth delving a little bit more into the design and detail of the Insight - because this is an area which has raised much interest among others. Or to put it more bluntly, the fact that people think it looks like a Prius has raised plenty of eyebrows. So here are some key thoughts, details and features of the Insight in full on, close up technicolour...

Pretty? Not really, but hardly repulsive either. That high, chopped-off tail, and steeply sloping rear roofline combine to create what's known as a 'kamm-tail'. Invented (discovered?) by German design-engineer, Wunibald Kamm, it reduces the air turbulence thrown off the back of the car at speeds - which in turn reduces aerodynamic drag.  

The key contributing factor to people saying that the Insight looks like a Prius is the silhouette and side profile of the glass house. This becomes particularly evident when you see the upper part of the car in isolation, as in the picture above, but some of the detail resolution... 

J Mays: Ford's Global Design Chief on why 'the computer is today's hotrod'

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>>

Sue Cischke, meet Drew Smith

 

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.

Sue Cischke, meet Dan Sturges

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.

Geneva 2009: Ford 'Maxes Out' Kinetic Design

Geneva 2009 saw Ford launch the third in a series of 'Kinetic design' Iosis concept cars. Following the Iosis, and Iosis X, here we have Iosis Max (Gavin Green says it sounds like an energy drink). As with the Iosis - which essentially became the Mondeo, and the Iosis X, which previewed the Kuga, most commentators expect the Iosis Max to preview the upcoming C-Max - Ford's European MPV, which competes with the likes of the Renault Scenic and Opel Zafira.

You can see my quick walkround, and overall take on the vehicle in the video below:

So this concept holds great significance, as it's the first vehicle to sit on Ford's new world Focus platform. In other words, the production version of the car you see above, looks likely to land in North America. This will no doubt cheer blue oval fans stateside, who've long been clamouring for Ford of Europe's sportier, more dynamic range of models.

This Focus platform is a pretty special one, too, for it is designed to accept a whole host of different engine technologies. This concept was launched with the new four cylinder, 1.6l EcoBoost gasoline engine - like Detroit's Lincoln C Concept. But according to Ford's director of Sustainable Mobility Technologies and Hybrid Vehicle Platforms Nancy Gioia, this platform will be capable of accepting not only petrol, diesel and hybrid motors, but full battery electric technology too (see the video for more on this).

Show goers could see what the underside of the electric versions of the future car might look like around the corner from the Iosis Max. Magna Steyr, Ford's EV partner, showcased the electric vehicle chassis and layout it is developing (watch the video below for more). It was largely ignored in a sea of shiny metal but it, and the battery electric Transit Connect sitting just to the other side, quietly demonstrate Ford's intent to go electric in a big way, something CEO Alan Mullaly affirmed yesterday.

All of this leads me to ask two questions. Firstly, can Ford make its global platform strategy work? American's say they want the dynamic European vehicles - Fiesta, Focus, S-Max. But Ford has brought euro-designed cars to the USA before - the first Focus, and the Mondeo (Contour) amongst others (Merkur XR4Ti anyone?) - and they didn't meet sales ambitions. The current economic and environmental climate suggests they should fair rather better this time, but if the production version of the car you see above is named Focus, I wonder if it will be hampered by association to the current - somewhat apologetic looking - North American Focus? (I've discussed this over on a blog with MPGOmatic, which you can check out here.)

The second question is a nagging doubt about how much further Kinetic design can be pushed. I was one of the few people in Geneva who wasn't hugely blown away by the Iosis Max. Plenty of commentators and designers have sung its praise over the past few days, but the hints of visual similarity to the Mercedes B-class - which come from its wheelbase and proportions, together with questionable colour/trim and the hinge-fest that are the doors and trunk lid, sullied a fundamentally sound idea in my eyes (watch the video above for my thoughts and the full tour). The question is, as this is the third in the series of 'Kinetic design' concepts, where do Ford - particularly Ford of Europe - go next, in design terms?

Kinetic design is intended to express - in the exterior form language of the vehicle - how 'fun to drive' and dynamic Ford's vehicles are. I'd say they've achieved that to some extent. Yet this vehicle was supposed to herald a new phase of design for Ford of Europe. Instead it feels like the topping out of the current form-language theme. So, rather like Mazda with their 'Flow' series of cars which appear at every auto show and feel rather long in the tooth, might Ford need a proper change of design gear before too long?

Ford Iosis Max photoset below - click on the link to go to the full Flickr set. All photos are creative commons licensed, please credit Joseph Simpson and link to this page.

Disclosure: Ford is sponsoring The Movement Design Bureau's design research work throughout 2009

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 6th March 2009

Geneva 2009: Infiniti Essence (Video) - right car, wrong time

No one appears to have told Infiniti that there’s a global financial crisis and that (apparently) the world now only wants to buy clean, economical city cars. Not that we’re saying a production version of the Infiniti Essence couldn’t be green(ish) you understand. Autopia is reporting that the real McCoy might even come with a diesel engine, coupled to a hybrid…

But don't worry about that happening - cos it'll never be built. And to be honest, we think that if it was, shoving a diesel-electric unit under the hood would be a bit of shame. There comes a time when you just have to say “stuff it”, and to be honest that’s pretty much what Infiniti have done here. It’s clearly a case of ‘right car, wrong time’, but hey, if you were 20 years old, wouldn’t you build yourself a nice birthday present?

So no, we think that this is one of those cases where a drop-dead gorgeous, large, 2-seater coupe would be just fine with a snorting great V8, thanks very much. In all seriousness, what the Essence could show though, is a way forward for Infiniti’s design language. This car has – frankly – unbelievable body surfacing. It will doubtless have its detractors, but from a design standpoint, the complex surfacing and highlights are incredibly well controlled, and the proportions of the car are pretty much spot-on. All in all, this was one of, it not the highlight of the Geneva 2009 autoshow.

We didn’t really expect it to be Infiniti who would throw caution to the wind and build a “screw you and your economic downturn” supercar concept, but we’re rather cheered by the fact that they did – and that it looks as good as this. See for yourself in the Video (top).

With thanks to Drew Smith – who pointed out the Infiniti, which I had previously missed due to tiredness and stupidity, as one of the stars of the show – and who makes a cameo voice-over appearance in the video. Check out his Downsideupdesign blog, too – because it rocks.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 5th March 2009