Still not had your fill of this year's Geneva auto show? Well then why not head over to Drew Smith's downsideupdesign blog, where you'll find me guesting on their first podcast, in which Drew and myself disect the design and strategy behind Geneva's most important production debuts (and at times, that disection perhaps comes closer to vivisection...don't say we didn't warn you!)
Click on the screen grab below to head through to downsideup's site, or here to go direct to the video on blip.tv
With thanks to Drew for conducting the podcast, and putting in all the edit time...Check back soon if you'd like to see us rake over some hot coals in the form of Geneva's concept 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.
For those of you who regularly follow this blog, it won't come as much of a surprise to learn that during 2009, we closely followed Ford of North America's sustainability and design work, so we thought it would be fun to pull together some of the best bits in a video - five minutes of Ford:
The video makes me realise how many interesting and genuine people we've met at Ford over the past year - thanks to all of those who gave us their time and made us feel so welcome. Ford has had a good year - especially compared to GM and Chrysler, but that doesn't mean it should rest on its laurels. As you can see from my last article - The 2009 Ford Hedge - we don't think they're front runners in the green space, but that's not to say they're not doing some interesting things. You can dig deeper into our archive, by searching our Ford tagged articles, which will flag up everything from the past year. Personal highlights included interviewing J Mays,Sue Cischke telling us about Ford's interest in things like Zipcar and High Speed Rail - and the response pieces from Dan Sturges, Amy and Robb, and Drew Smith.
And, just for laughs and because it's Christmas, here's one of our favourite videos of the year. For anyone seduced into believing that car companies can suddenly get good at in-car IT, enjoy our hysteria as we try to use the voice recognition of Ford's Sync, on a 2009 Mercury Mariner.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 22nd December 2009
Full disclosure - Ford of North America sponsored the Movement Design Bureau's research work during 2009
I am not a technophobe, or a technological luddite. While not the most tech-sympathetic (witness how many computers and phones I’ve gone through in the last couple of years) I will typically give new tech, and geeky gadgets a fair crack of the whip. If they’re attached to a car, then all the better.
So give me ipod integration, navigation, cruise control and power seats. I’m up for them. I can even see the point in onboard fridges, TVs and the like.
But I just don’t get auto parking, which has been around for a while now and have recently experienced first hand. I realise that might put me at odds with many who'll welcome this feature as a boon, but here's my take...
It was standard on the top of the line Prius that we tested last month, and Ford rolled it out as a feature in some of its 2010 MY cars starting back in the summer - even winning awards for it. As you can see from the video below – using the systems in action, they vary only in the minor details: Press button. Car identifies big enough space. Slot car into reverse. Car steers, you brake. Done. Parked.
They work well enough, up to a point. As the guy in the Ford video suggested, the system needs a space around 120% the length of the car to get in to. That’s my first problem. In a lot of spaces in the city, that’s too small. I reckon on about 6-8 inches either end of the car is what I need (and often, what you’ve got to play with in a typical London street). Secondly these systems take longer to slot the car in to the space than an adept human driver. That might seem a small detail, but in the city, you’re often on a street, blocking traffic and under pressure to park, and park fast.
I'm not trying to gloat about my parking prowess. Seeing these systems in action is impressive – has a ‘wow’ factor even. But fundamentally, they aren’t as good as a good human. For me, until that changes, then I’m not interested. They simply become another techy thing for car makers to sell as extras – just like they do sat navs, power seats and more powerful stereo systems.
In a way, part of my problem is that they don’t go far enough.
Perhaps the next step on from these systems could offer something really useful. Link it – via the sat nav – to something like IBM's parking space sensors as part of a Smarter Cities programme – to help you actually find (and reserve) a vacant space. Then allow the car to completely take over – parking itself, controlling brake and throttle pedal. So the car really parks itself. You might even want to get out at the entrance of a parking lot, and let the car drive itself up three or four levels and slot into a tight space. Now that’s something I can see the value of.
Just before I took off on a recent holiday, a man from Toyota came to pick up a (by then) not so shiny, white, new shape Prius that he'd dropped with me the previous week. It's a sign of how much this car moves the game on from the previous generation vehicle that I was slightly sad to see it go.
We've not hidden the fact that we aren't huge fans of the previous generation car - both as a vehicle in its own right, the image that exists around it, or the generic 'type' of person who seems to drive it. We therefore went into this test with a decent level of scepticism. But the new car is in a different league to its predecessor. It's bigger, yet feels even more at home on city roads. It has a bigger petrol engine, yet is more economical. The thousands who will buy this car, especially those upgrading from the previous model, will doubtless be delighted. For the rest of us who weren't fans before, it's true to say that the Prius is now a competent car which makes a decent case in its own right - you no longer need to make excuses for its hybrid drivetrain nature.
You can read some previous musings I had while actually living with the car here and here, but a couple of weeks after it left MDB towers, three things stand out - and we've split them in to three short videos:
The image and positioning of this new car - (includes our snapshot verdict)
The hybrid system, how it works and its three different modes
The car's interior design, features and equipment (and what we don't like)
For all that we were impressed with the new Prius though, we still can't get over one or two key issues and a few of the bigger picture questions it asks, rather than answers. We'll talk more about that next week in our post test wrap up and review - which will include a full details photoset.
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:
What
were your favourite details from cars in Frankfurt? The vents on the
lower body sides of the VW L1 were far and away my personal highlight,
until I looked more closely at the door handles on the Rolls Royce
Ghost. But back in the real world, I was quietly impressed with the
fold-away centre seat design in the Ford Grand C-Max, a car that
otherwise leaves me quite cold. Aimed squarely at young families, I
suspect it’s a design feature that will not only make people go ‘oooh’
in the autoshow or dealership, but that they’ll really use in
day-to-day life - watch the video below to see a quick demo of how it
works.
To say that the seating layout in family cars is important, is as obvious as saying that cars need wheels. But it’s easy to forget that,
up until the age of about 20, many of us had difficult relationships
with our siblings. Certainly, the idea of sharing a rear bench for several hours
with my younger brother rarely filled me with joy, and there would
often be a spat ensuing before we’d got beyond the end of the
drive! So when the first Renault Scenic (the car that essentially created the c-size MPV segment in Europe) arrived, we’d pestered my dad into
buying one within just a couple of months of its launch – mainly because we
wanted separate, reclinable chairs, fold away picnic tables and cubbies
to keep our own books and walkmen in (no iPods in those days).
Ford Grand C-Max. Pity the name isn't as original as the folding chair design...
However,
the price of all that independent rear chair malarkey was that to fold
and remove them was quite a job (I seem to remember reading each chair
weighed something like 15kg.) – folding and removing them usually
resulting in skinned knuckles. So when Opel moved the game on with the
seven-seat Zafira, it invented a very neat seating arrangement termed
‘flex-7’ which meant you could convert the vehicle into a van, without
needing to take out all the chairs and leave them at home.
Access to that rearmost row of seats in the 7-seat MPV sector
remains something of an issue, however. In the smaller, c-segment
market that the Grand C-Max enters, the rearmost pews are only really
big enough for kids. Yet to get there, they need (and this applies to
most vehicles in the Segment such as the Scenic, Verso etc) to tilt and
slide the outermost centre row seat forwards to access the rearmost
row. Given that the chairs tend to be heavy, and the strength needed to operate the lever mechanisms
which tilt the chairs, this isn’t an ideal arrangement when small
people with tiny fingers are typically the ones trying to scramble into the back.
Now you see it...
...and now you don't
In
fact, it's quite rare that seven full seats are used in these cars,
typically it’s just five or six on the school run. So by allowing the
middle row centre seat to be ‘disappeared’ into one of its neighbours,
small kids can just walk straight through the vehicle to the back row
without needing to get mum or dad to perform chair gymnastics. Ford have spent time designing a centre chair which makes all this possible. As the back tumbles forwards
onto the squab, a secondary part of the backrest folds in, allowing the
seat to be compact enough to fit inside the outer seat squab. The
second device which allows this arrangement to work – and a critical
change from the designs found in the opposition, is that instead of
being secured to the floor, this centre seat is in fact supported by
cantilevering off the outer chair. Once folded away, what’s left is a clear gangway between
the two outer seats, allowing kids to simply climb in and walk through
to the rearmost row.
It’s one of those ideas that gets you thinking ‘why didn’t
anyone think of this before?’ But is a neat, if small, example of
user-research led design, where actually observing how families use
cars and spending time with them as they go about their lives has
resulted in something genuinely useful and new. It’s amusing to hear,
too, that Ford’s engineering and design teams aren’t above playing with
Lego Technic in order to help them work out how the mechanism would
work. We wonder if it was spending time observing kids that gave them that idea too.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 22nd September 2009
Disclosure: Ford is sponsoring the Movement Design Bureau's research work in 2009
There was a huge amount to see in Frankfurt, so if you're pushed for time and want the quick whizz-around check out my "Frankfurt in Four minutes" review video. However, on the off-chance that you missed some of the concepts or want to have a (slightly) longer look, I've clipped out some 2-minute long videos for a few of the key concepts. So, without further ado, here's the:
BMW efficient Dynmaics Concept:
Renault Twizy:
Citroen ReVolte:
Renault Zoe and the 'ZE' range video:
As with the four minute video, you can watch most of these in HD mode, so it's worth clicking through to Youtube (logo in bottom right corner) and then clicking on high quality mode if you want them to see them in full, clear view. We'll have more thoughts and a bit of indepth coverage on some of these, plus more Frankfurt coverage, shortly.
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...
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.
