Is there a future for the motor car, asks Brian Byrne? I’m prompted to that thought from a presentation I attended recently, given by a Ford Motor Company ’futurologist’. She has a more corporate title of manager of Ford Global Trends and Futuring, but crystal ball gazing is really what Sheryl Connolly does.Her job is to ask ’what if?’ questions and then ’write stories’ about resulting answers. There are lots of such scenarios, but in her brief they all boil down to the future of personal transportation.
Especially in a world where the number of passenger cars is forecast to go from its current one billion to 2.5 billion by 2050. Ford’s preoccupation in that scenario is how to keep them all moving.
Virtually all of the projected growth is expected in the ’developing’ world, countries which have large populations but relatively low car ownership. The aspiration amongst their peoples is to achieve a similar level of lifestyle technology as in developed countries.
But is that practical? Is it desirable? Is it even possible?
There are signs that it isn’t. During the Beijing Olympics, traffic gridlocks were recorded outside the city which lasted up to 12 days. In Nigeria, tales of traffic jams that make 40-mile journeys a 12-hour and scary endurance event are common and are reflected in other urbanised parts of Africa. In Europe, depending on country, city and time of day, car commuting can be much less a trial but is nevertheless an increasing inconvenience for many.
Ford’s efforts towards dealing with this are in the short term based on improved technology. Including electronic systems such as the Traffic Jam Assist that I experienced in prototype form last week which will eventually take over stop-go driving.
But the company admits that the solutions for beyond 2025 will increasingly involve mixed transportation arrangements. Travellers will use communications technology to select the best set of systems to get from the beginning to the end of their journeys.
This could mean starting off in one’s car, parking it at the edge of a city that doesn’t allow ’outside’ cars and taking a train, then using local public transport or taxis or ’zipcar’ type on-street rental vehicles to get around where they want to be. And don’t forget the rental bicycles, rapidly becoming a popular option in many European cities including Dublin.
Management of all of this will depend absolutely on the smartphone and its apps, becoming ubiquitous in both developed and developing markets.
Looking down that road, so to speak, I'm suggesting that the ownership of cars which has done so much to deliver personal freedom in our ’developed’ world will probably not survive. The purchase of a car that is from the heart, and defines us as individuals, is heading to its end. Regulation of driving behaviour, and the implementation of technologies that minimise driver skills input, are propelling us to a place where transportation is a commodity.
It’s already happening. Research in the US, where the car became a teenage rite of passage for most of the century or so since it was invented, shows that young people are increasingly disinterested in even taking out driving licences. In Europe, car sales are static or declining. Partly because of recession, but also because there are other ways of getting around, and a generation has grown up using them rather than buying cars.
That’s why carmakers from every part of the world are busy building markets in places like China, Russia, and India. In the two former where there’s a ’pop’ through the rapid development of a middle and richer class from the previous static Communist regimes, in the latter because there’s an ongoing population bulge which will bring that nation to being the most populous country in the world in just a couple of years’ time.
Maybe none of those expanding markets represent a long-term future for the global carmakers. They are already experiencing similar precursors to the bursting economic bubble which financially screwed up our part of the world. It is also arguable that we simply don’t have the material resources in the planet to either build or power enough cars for everybody who doesn’t have one now.
So what’s the answer in ground transport for those who currently have to walk, cycle, or take rides on overloaded ’tuk-tuks’ or buses and trucks to get to where they want to go?
Well, when ’Star Trek’ began its futuristic journeys on our TV screens, we didn’t really expect that the tablet hardware which the ’Enterprise’ crew used routinely would become real in the iPad on which I’m writing this piece. We didn’t even have personal computers then, never mind laptops.
So is ’Beam us up, Scotty’ really so far behind?
Hope it isn’t. Otherwise the planet’s population could conceivably whimper to its end in a global gridlock. Though that’s not a story which Sheryl Connolly told us last week.
In the meantime, enjoy every gearshift you make, even in a traffic jam. They could be numbered.
NOTE: Most of the foregoing musings are my own, and not Ford's or Sheryl Connolly's, both of whom have a positive view of the automobile's future. BB
