Looking Out - The Podcast: Episode 4
BMW's slightly scary i Vision Dee, Joe's EV run across Europe, and what CES teaches us about systems design.
24 January, 2023
Welcome to Looking Out, a newsletter and podcast that connects the dots across the automotive industry, mobility, design, and culture. Looking Out is brought to you by Joe Simpson and Drew Smith. If you like what you see and hear, tell your friends!
That’s right, folks! It’s time for another auditory exploration of the curious comings and goings of the automotive industry.
And if you’re the kind of person that prefers to read along, then you can grab the transcript of the show here.
In this episode of Looking Out - The Podcast, Joe and Drew discuss:
BMW's i Vision Dee, why some folk find her scary, and what she says about BMW's future
Why is it that a lot of folk in the West find robots scary and a lot of folk in the East don't?
It's a story that goes way back: about 400 years in the West, and about a thousand years in the East.
It's also the lens through which we unpick BMW's virtual personal assistant, known as Dee, and her deep integration into their latest concept car.
Is the era of the Ultimate Driving Machine finally coming to an end? And is the Ultimate Entertainment Machine really what's going to replace it?
(For a deeper dive on i Vision Dee, read Drew’s take here.)
Joe's surprisingly normal Christmas run in an EV from Gothenburg to Leeds
Who'd have thought that Joe and his family would run out of range before his wife's Polestar 2? But that's precisely what happened on the family trip home for Christmas, as toilet breaks, driver swaps and snack stops intervened before the car ran out of charge.
Across the 3,227 kilometres, Joe learned that the factors limiting EV adoption in Europe are less to do with absolute range and the availability of chargers, and more to do with how people think about recharging versus refuelling.
It's a mindset shift that we need to make if we're to manage the compromises between vehicle cost, range, weight and safety. But, we wonder, when - and how - is the industry going to tackle that?
Why CES left us longing for a more systemic approach from the auto industry to the challenges we face
The Consumer Electronics Show is the most significant motor show – by a different name – on the global calendar. Suppliers and OEMs alike head there to share their take on the future of the car, and the future of mobility.
It's quite ironic that they do so in isolated conference halls dispersed across an impossible-to-walk city in the middle of the desert. We reckon it speaks to a deep philosophical challenge that the automotive industry is facing: how do we better integrate our products and services in to existing sociocultural and economic systems, rather than imposing ourselves upon them?
Joe also gives a preview of an upcoming piece for Looking Out - The Newsletter about the Tesla Semi, and Drew wonders what Apple's struggles in China might mean for the automotive industry.
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