Looking Out - The Christmas Closedown
A vote of thanks for the year just past, and looking forward to the year ahead.
21 December, 2022.
Welcome to Looking Out, a newsletter about the auto industry, mobility, design, and the cultures that surround us. Looking Out is brought to you by Joe Simpson and Drew Smith of The Automobility Group. If you like what you see, tell your friends!
Why it’s interesting: we were going to bring you a full edition this week, but we’re both just a little bit buggered. So we offer you this instead:
Every year in recent memory, we’ve got to the end and said to one another “Boy, that was a year!” and nodded in exhausted agreement.
And so it is that after the pandemic, a supply chain crisis, the war in Ukraine, an energy crisis, an automotive industry that doesn’t seem to know which way is up and — breathe — more than a few personal blows, we’re again looking at each other, a little bewildered, and wondering how we made it through.
But we did, and if you’re reading this, then you did too! And we reckon that that’s something worth celebrating.
I think it’s ok to admit that, sometimes, sitting down to write Looking Out is the last thing either of us want to do. Between work life and life life, finding the time to be inspired — let alone write in vaguely coherent sentences — can feel like a tall order. And yet every time we hit publish, we’re both supremely glad that we did.
On the one hand, Looking Out is an opportunity to get out of our day to day and think differently about the work of our lives. On the other, it gives us an opportunity to connect with folk that we might otherwise not meet. When you write to us, our hearts skip a collective beat because — hark! — we are not alone in this weird and wonderful world of ours.
This year, we launched the podcast we’d long promised ourselves, and it’s starting to feel like the conversational compliment to the newsletter that we’d always intended. Each episode has been a refinement of the last and, for that, we owe a debt of gratitude to Chris Frith, our producer. We’re looking forward to evolving the format further still in 2023, and we’d love to invite guests along too. So if you’d like to join us, or know someone who should, reply to this email and let us know!
While we’re on the topic of networks, if you think our work is worth sharing, please spread the word. Your referrals are the best way for us to grow our little corner of the internet. Send people the link to the podcast from here and use the button below to share the newsletter.
If you haven’t had the chance to listen to the latest podcast, we’ve put a short summary and the link below. It might be a nice way to fill those sometimes-yawning days between Christmas and New Years!
So with all that said, we’d like to offer you a huge, heartfelt thanks for coming along for the ride that has been 2022. We’re looking forward to looking out with you in 2023.
Cheers, and best wishes for the holidays,
Drew & Joe.
Looking Out - The Podcast: Episode 3
In this episode of Looking Out - The Podcast, we discuss:
The success of Hyundai design and how — to the surprise of many — Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis are becoming aspirational brands.
Sure, Peter Schreyer and his acolytes from VW, Bentley and Lamborghini have had a massive impact.
But we’re also seeing the fruit born form seeds sown much earlier, with Giorgetto Giugiaro’s delightful Pony Coupe concept recently reimagined as the N Vision 74.
For us, the South Korean brands have become some of the standard bearers of genuinely interesting, aspirational design.
The implications of Apple demoting design and how this could affect other companies.
People often talk about the magic pairing that was Steve Jobs (the visionary) and Jony Ive (the designer), but without Tim Cook (the executor), Apple wouldn’t be anything like the success it is today.
But with Jobs and Ive now long gone, and continued churn in the design ranks, there’s been precious little genuinely new — or deeply good — stuff for Tim to ship.
Nonetheless, Apple’s cash pile keeps growing. As Marco Arment, famed independent Apple developer said on Twitter:
Tim Cook is a good business person, Tim Cook does not have good taste. We all want this to not be true, but we know that it is.
The impact on how design is valued at other companies, now that Apple’s growing ever fatter on past successes, could be far reaching.
What’s to become of the small car market as Volkswagen struggles to produce EV's cheaply and the potential of other transportation methods such as e-bikes.
It’s a recurring theme for us, if only because the impacts of European manufacturers scaling back or terminating their small car programmes has such wide-ranging implications.
Fewer people will be able to afford their cars, which means factories will be producing less of them, which means OEMs will be employing fewer people. The societal consequences are hard to ignore.
The Chinese manufacturers, however, have no such problems and are preparing an onslaught of affordable, class-competitive EVs. And, of course, micromobility is bound to play a role.
The social capital of Mercedes' new performance upgrade subscription and how that might determine its success.
Why social capital? Because — if we take a lesson from the growth of social networks — the ease with which something allows us accrue social capital or, in simpler terms, to look good in front of our peers, will determine how willing we are to pay for said thing.
Mercedes’ $100/month upgrade for the EQS, EQE, and EQS SUV doesn’t make the car hugely faster, nor can you tell that it’s fitted, so: no social capital.
Drew reckons it’s going to be a tough sell.
Listen to the latest episode of Looking Out - The Podcast here:
Thanks to all of you for inspiring us this past year. We really appreciate it.
If you liked this issue of Looking Out, please share it with people whom you think might like it too!
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.