Looking Out #17
Retrofuture vs the future and does my truck look big in this? Everybody Hertz and the UK’s Dutch hub. Human-centred design and the future we choose. Jobs to be done and where we now do them
10 March, 2020
A newsletter about the auto industry, mobility, design, and the cultures that surround us. Brought to you by Joe Simpson and Drew Smith of The Automobility Group. If you like what you see, tell your friends!
Auto
Fiat’s retrofuturistic 500 squares up to the not-so-retro future of Citroen’s Ami
Why it’s interesting: two takes on electric urban mobility, one beautiful, the other brave, suggest an exciting future for the small car.
At last year's Automotive News Congress in Gothenburg, there was much talk about automakers abandoning the small car segment all together. The challenges of producing the likes of Volkswagen's Up!, Fiat's 500 and Opel's now-deceased Adam with emissions that please the regulators and at prices that the market will tolerate were seen as overwhelming by many in the industry.
In response to the challenges of producing emissions-compliant small cars Fiat has gone in one direction, producing a larger, more expensive 500 that rocks a bespoke electric platform. Citroen has taken a more radical approach with its diminutive, pared-back Ami.
The differences between the two cars are many and significant. The Fiat 500 is 3.63 metres long to the Citroen Ami's 2.41 metres. The 500 will cost £29,000/€33,000 at launch in the UK, while you can get behind the wheel of an Ami for £5200/€6000, or rent it by the month or minute for a mere fraction of that. As you'd imagine for the price, the 500 comes with a suite of driver assistance and connectivity technologies. With the Ami, you provide your own bluetooth speaker, and your phone provides most of the technology you can see and touch.
In terms of how the cars will actually be used, I wonder whether the differences will be so great. For although the Fiat can travel up to 320 Km on a charge and the Ami can only manage 70 Km, across Europe, cars travel - on average - less than 35Km per day, according to the most recent figures I could find.
It's impossible to escape the aesthetic differences between the two, it's true. But when designing for maximum utility, minimum size and minimum cost, such compromises are inevitable. The Ami's proportions simply don't lend themselves to much beyond shrink-wrapping the package of batteries, motor and humans. Contrasted against Renault's earlier entry in the quadricycle market, the polarising Twizy, the Ami, with its soft grey, anonymous form almost disappears.
But again, for the Citroen Ami's intended market and intended use, I wonder how much its aesthetic deficiencies will matter in practice. The cellphone, the ease of access to which the Ami is mimicking with its various price plans, has long since become - at a distance - an anonymous slab of glass, metal and plastic. Personality is imbued through the apps we run on it, and the experiences to which it gives us access.
That the phone plays such a central role in animating the Ami indicates that the car itself is the accessory - just like the bluetooth speaker that you sit on the dashboard - rather than the main event that many automotive designers hope their product to be.
Of course, the market will be the ultimate judge of who's produced the more compelling approach to electric urban mobility. But at first glance, Citroen's Ami is the more innovative framing of what four-wheeled urban mobility can be.
| DS
Americans’ cars and trucks no longer fit infrastructure
Why it’s interesting: size doesn’t matter… said someone, once. But the up-sizing of the average American vehicle is butting into the constraints imposed by physical world. Do Americans actually care?
We go from one end of the automotive size bandwidth to the other in this week’s Looking Out. With their insatiable appetite for large trucks and SUVs, average American consumers are finding that their new ‘cars’ (I use the term loosely) aren’t fitting into the garages, or into parking lots any more. Reportedly, this size factor is even causing a Elon Musk to consider shaving inches off the Cybertruck, so it’ll actually fit into the average American garage.
This topic speaks rather unkindly about the auto industry’s grasp on reality. Infrastructure - roads, parking, garages - is historically based on the horse and carriage in Europe. In America, it was built for the car from the outset, but cars used to be much smaller. Infrastructure sizing hasn’t changed. Cars have. They’ve ballooned. Especially when we look at the light-duty pick-up truck that many Americans now choose as their everyday ‘car’.
In Europe, width is the big problem. A regulation parking space is 2.4m wide, meaning that in many modern SUVs and large sedans you’re left with just 20cm or so to open the door and get out. As our personal girth has also ballooned, this has increasingly become an issue! In America, height and length are the problem. But do customers really care?
The USA Today article quotes one F-150 customer (apparently typical of many others) who says:
“My truck is really big. Trying to manoeuvre into a space totally sucks. If you go to the mall and it’s crowded, looking for a spot is a huge factor. I really have to spend time searching.”
And yet, here the articles relays about the same customer:
“When [she] moved into her new home in the Dallas areas recently, she ran into a problem. Her 2016 F150 did not fit into the garage. Undeterred, she bought the 2019 model. That one also didn’t fit.”
Vehicles getting bigger is making them more difficult to use. As they get taller, they get harder to see out of. We add more tech, to combat this issue. Which adds weight. On and on the problem grows, ballooning vehicles in size.
On the face of it this is design making customers’ lives harder and worse – not better. What are customers getting in return, for this growth in size? Quantifiably, not much. And yet, as HIS analyst Stefanie Brinley concludes:
“they’ve decided [this growth in size is] worth it to them. That it’s not critical. It’s just a fact.”
Practically, Americans are now accustomed to the cabin and load bed space of trucks having a certain size, and aren’t going to settle for something less spacious in their next car. Which because it’s safer and more loaded with tech, has grown by a few inches here and there. But size has an emotive factor, too. I’d wager this growth in size is as much about expressing a position of power and superiority out on the road, as anything tangible.
The irony of course is that American cars (and by cars in this case I do mean sedans and coupes) used to be much bigger than they are today. The behemoths of the 60s and 70s only fell from grace when the fuel crisis kicked in, and costs spiralled.
It begs the question, will the same happen with todays trucks and SUVs that many chose as their everyday ‘car’. If Americans are prepared to put up with the inconvenience of not being able to park their trucks and SUVs in garages and parking lots, are fuel price rises the only thing that’s likely to get them downsizing? And does this mean that – ultimately – a switch to electric propulsion simply enables the on-going upward spiral in vehicle sizes? Because, for the consumer, the gas price crunch point never arrives? Or does electrification mean a renewed focus on overall efficiency, improved aerodynamics and driving a reduction in size and weigth?
Image: USA Today
| JS
Mobility
Crunch time for car rental companies
Why it’s interesting: a fascinating analysis of Hertz’s business paints a less-than-pretty picture.
Traditional car rental businesses like Hertz are facing threats on a number of fronts.
First, the emergence of Turo, Lyft and Uber have increased competition and put forward pressure on prices.
Second, the short-term pressure of coronavirus and, long term, the potential for the climate crisis to decimate airline passenger volumes destabilises the primary source of rental companies’ revenue: 68% of Hertz's revenue comes from airport locations.
Third, the decline in used-car values reduces the amount of value rental companies can recover when they dispose of their vehicles, reducing margins.
Given that fleet sales to car rental companies have long been a way for OEMs to dispose of excess inventory and keep the factories running, it’s interesting to ponder the upstream impact that the decline of rental companies could have on the finances of automakers.
Is the movement of OEMs in to the car rental space a hedge against their exposure to car rental companies? Without the legacy of servicing airport locations, OEMs (likely in partnership, as FCA is with Turo) could be in a better position to develop an offering that puts vehicles where more customers can use them, all the while keeping that inventory moving.
For a more in-depth analysis on Hertz’s predicament, read this excellent piece by Daniel Ruiz.
| DS
The UK’s hub airport isn’t Heathrow, it’s Amsterdam Schiphol
Why it’s interesting: building another runway and expanding the UK’s primary airport was this week turned down on climate change grounds. But it’s part of a bigger, and more complex picture about the nature of Britain, London and its relationship with regions.
The news was a surprise – but perhaps shouldn’t have been. The planned expansion of London’s Heathrow Airport – namely a third runway, was ruled unlawful by UK courts, because it wasn’t compatible with the UK’s commitment to meeting the Paris agreement.
It throws up a series of interesting questions. Will all large infrastructure and transport programmes now be measured against Paris commitments, and how they’ll help or hinder us hitting them in future? (short answer: yes). Given the UK government’s decision not to appeal, and Boris Johnson’s (the prime minister) previous opposition, is something fishy afoot here? Who knows.
But the big question is, could and should Heathrow ever become the UK’s hub airport in the first place? Because, if you take freight out of the picture, Heathrow (barely) works for London. And doesn’t really work at all, as the hub/connection to the rest of the UK.
This rather neatly argued piece by Tom Forth – entitled ‘the UK’s hub airport isn’t London Heathrow, it’s Amsterdam Schiphol’ puts together a fairly conclusive argument, which concludes that the UK already has a hub airport. And it’s not Heathrow. Why?
You can’t get a train to Heathrow (except from London – and from most parts of London even that’s hard, slow)
You can’t fly there from much of the UK (it only serves 7 UK regional destinations)
There’s a better hub across the sea, at Schiphol (which serves 24 UK airports)
The UK already uses Schiphol, not Heathrow to connect to the world
It’s cheaper to fly via Amsterdam
It’s quicker to fly via Amsterdam
The argument is that Heathrow needed its third runway to actually become a hub for the UK in the first place, it’s never really been one for anywhere outside London. But experience tells us that extra runway, were it ever built, was unlikely to be used to expand (less profitable) regional connections. Instead, as Tom points out, the Airports Commission’s question (about the expansion of Heathrow) effectively boiled down to, “How can we keep the UK well-connected to the world via a hub in London?” But that's a very different question to, “How can we keep the UK well-connected to the world?”
London is central to the success of the UK, that shouldn’t be forgotten. But we’re hearing much ‘levelling up’ rhetoric from the government right now, and the Heathrow debate makes clear that some fundamental changes are needed in the way we approach infrastructure, if parts of the UK outside of London are to become more productive and better connected to the rest of the world. The climate change imperative will cause even bigger questions to be asked, and presents something of a dilemma. Connectivity and productivity vs meeting emissions targets.
Written from the lounge in Amsterdam Schiphol airport, en route from Sweden to Northern England.
| JS
Design
Beyond the anthropocene: is human-centred design bad?
Why it’s interesting: user-centred design has arguably becoming the defining design ideology of our time. But two recent articles argue the profession needs to move beyond that. Fast.
Human-centred design is almost universally accepted as a force for good. But in the past fortnight, Ben Reason and Jussi Pasanen have both questioned this concept. And caused some serious levels of self-reflection.
The fundamental argument they make is that by focusing only on improving human experience, human-centred design prevents us from seeing the havoc we’re wreaking on every other living thing on earth, and the planet itself. What’s more, human-centred design amplifies the problem by creating a feedback loop – by making consumption that bit easier, human centred design enables us to do more, consume more, destroy more. And to hell with the planet.
It’s a stark message. And the pragmatic, techno-fix rationalist in me (and I suspect most readers who work in design) finds the concept tough to swallow. Reason gets why:
“design often holds an ethical position as a driver of good for humans…”
But he contends:
“we need to acknowledge that this intention has flipped into a driver of consumption, enabling us to do more and be more effective as a species at the detriment to our life system on earth.”
The fundamental problem with human-centred design then, is that it emphasises that human beings are the most important thing on the planet, that everything else is essentially there in our service. A concept known as being anthropocentric. As Reason articulates it, we’re living in the anthropocene – a new geographical epoch, because we’ve had so much impact on the planet:
“If [the planet’s] destruction is required to improve the human experience, so be it. Nor does it matter if the problems we are ‘solving’ are real or manufactured."
Reason has created a thesis about how we move on from this, and the standout point, for me, is when we argued that we need to “reframe prosperity”. Nice phrase.
Why reframing? Because capitalism places almost no economic value on concepts such as care and love which we as people need and tend to highly ‘value’. But because of the lack of economic output they create, most designers are trapped working in the service of large corporations, or as Pasanen puts it:
what is the role of human centred design in directly and indirectly facilitating the destruction of the living planet by being the carbon-stained ‘velvet glove for the iron fist’ of globalised capitalism?
Ouch. But Reason’s core thesis about how designers move forward is the fundamentally interesting take away:
What I take [from Jackson] is the idea of asking; “what if we up the time for care and dial down the need for stuff?” “Then we have the beginning of alternative scenarios to work with. I believe this is where design has a huge role to play."
As a designer who does this job because at a fundamental level I want to make life better, it’s an appealing and challenging construct to engage with.
| JS
The future we chose
Why it’s interesting: a new book by the folk who led negotiations for the 2015 Paris climate agreement paints a compelling picture of what can happen if we act immediately and decisively on climate change.
It also covers what happens if we don’t act, but it’s Sunday evening, I’m in a positive mood, and I’d like to stay that way.
Reading this extract of The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christina Figueres and Tom Rivett, a few things came to mind.
First, was a mental image of how beautiful our surroundings would be if we embarked on a mass reforestation of our environment.
Reforestation is proposed as a key solution to the climate crisis, as trees pull carbon dioxide out of the air, shade the earth, and help moderate temperature and humidity. Imagine if the tree-line boulevards of Paris became the norm the world over, only more richly planted with trees that could also provide food for citizens?
Then I was transported to my semi-rural childhood on sheep farms in northern New South Wales. My forebears had cleared the undulating foothills of Australia’s Great Dividing Range of their majestic Eucalypts to make way for the sheep, on the back of which modern Australia is so proud to have been built. What I would now give to see that forest restored.
The other half of my childhood was spent in a leafy neighbourhood in Sydney. It was a place defined by its strong ties, those next door-neighbourly connections that provided occasional child care, coffee and cake dates, and the loan of a power tool or two.
I contrasted this with the neighbourhoods into which I’ve settled as I’ve moved around the world. The strong ties that defined the street-side camaraderie of the place where I grew up have disappeared. I can hardly tell you who lives next door, let alone over the street. But, suggest Figueres and Rivett, those strong ties will reemerge as we pull together to adapt to our changing climate.
And among many other reflections, I settled on my childhood vacations. They were, by the definition offered up by the authors, slow-cations. Mostly, we took long road trips, and when we flew, it was to places we couldn’t reach by car. When we arrived, we stayed for weeks at time, becoming immersed in other cultures, enjoying what I can now see were some of the most powerful educational experiences of my life. We sure as hell didn’t fly somewhere to spend a week, let alone a weekend. Of course, that behaviour was driven by factors other than concern for the environment - cost and the time dad could take off work, primarily.
Indeed, so many of the human behaviours and values that Figueres and Rivett suggest we will need to adapt to, and mitigate against, the climate crisis were a norm just 30 years ago.
To me, 2020 feels a lot like 2008, but rather than the crisis being constrained to financial markets and the aspects of our lives that they touch. We’re now acutely aware that crisis is coming for our environment and the home that we all share.
In years following the Great Recession, many chose not to heed its lessons. I’ll never forget my anger at watching perfectly good cars being scrapped in order to keep maladapted OEMs afloat.
2020 also feels a lot like 2008 in that I’m hopeful that we can choose different this time, and put what we've learned in to action and adapt to our changing circumstances.
But we have to chose.
Image: Ville de Paris/Apur/Céline Orsingher
| DS
Culture
Looking for a job
Why it’s interesting: a delightful ad for an infrastructure company demonstrates the importance of finding the right frame.
I could go deep on this and muse on technology looking for a job, or extol the virtues of the jobs-to-be-done framework.
It’s been a bumper week for word count, however, and I don’t want to detract from this delightful ad and the powerful messages it contains.
| DS
On working remotely
Why it’s interesting: whether you’re alarmed or think that the world is over reacting to Coronavirus, you might soon find yourself in a situation where you’re working from home, or managing those that are.
I’m not going to be alarmist or recount the figures and fears we’re having presented to us on a minute by minute bases in the news, but there’s a chance many of us will be asked to work from home, potentially for a few weeks, at some point in the near future. This is a reality in Italy right now. And was for large parts of China throughout February. The US, UK, Germany, France and Spain may well be next.
But assuming you don’t catch the virus, you’ll probably be asked – or want to – to keep on working. After discovering daytime TV isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and the novelty wears off (give it three days), many discover that remote working is more of a challenge than it first seems. The challenge is usually more of a socio-cultural, rather than technological problem.
Nonetheless, if you manage a team of people that aren’t used to working from home, the first point to ensure readiness for this scenario is to be technologically enabled. Many people don’t bring their laptops home at night, many who do so, leave their charger in the office. Many more find that, at home, they experience small technical issues. All three could trip you up at the first hurdle when attempting to home work. Once you’re covered on this front, Mark Boulton has some practical, people-centric advice:
As someone who has regularly worked remotely over the past decade, a few of his points really jump out and resonate:
Create an online triage session, a couple of times a day, to replace the coffee machine conversation and ‘will just come have a look at this’ serendipitous support that happens in a physical office.
Don’t try to replace in-person only sessions with tech. In other words, there are certain things that can’t be done remotely – like client/team workshops. Don’t think you can solve this problem with tech. Defer or delay.
People first – human connections and mental health can suffer when remoting. Focus on people, and what they need. Support, encourage and empathise. Stick with them and don’t expect everyone to adapt at the same pace.
Where will this scenario leave us? As Mark suggests:
It's going to be interesting how enforced remote working will affect teams who are not used to doing it. My hunch is that some will quickly realise they are more effective working this way. I also think, in some cases, it will be a disaster where organisations are unable to adapt their tools or processes.
Time will tell.
Pair with Azeem Azhar – After the virus
| JS
Thanks to Ben Reason, Jussi Pasanen, Tom Forth and Kevin Tindal for inspiring us this past fortnight.
That's it for this issue. We love feedback (positive and negative), and to answer any questions you have. So email Joe or Drew and we’ll get back to you.
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