The reasons why we buy cars today, can completely change in the coming decades. The BBC spoke with Ford futurist, trying to predict automobile culture 2050. Most of us who have cars attached to them. We can not imagine ourselves without them. But the reality is that these vehicles, which occupy in our lives not the least, spend 95% of their time standing on the side of the road or in the garage. Now imagine that you still own a car — brand new car — you don’t have to pay.
But with one condition. Do you share this car with strangers, rent it out them to rent when they need. Alternatively, you can select several drivers in several cities. This can affect how we buy — and use — our cars in the coming years.
Sheryl Connelly head of global consumer trends and futurist for Ford, thinks about it every day; not so much about what cars people will buy in two years, and will they actually drive cars in 20 years.
The deal with renting to a stranger is an example. About 12 thousands of thousands of Londoners and 14 other drivers in seven U.S. cities offered to provide temporary space in their cars pre-screened tenants, how to donate a car. The idea is that they can earn enough money to cover the payments associated with the car, thereby getting a car which they need, practically for free. The average car is parked most of the time, occupies space and does nothing useful. So that his division may make sense, but some people have no idea how will let other people to drive your car. This idea seems absurd to them.
And yet the reality is that peer-to-peer sharing through services like easyCar Club, the division of vehicles using Uber or Lyft, is becoming more and more common. In addition, it seems that the younger we are, the less we are committed to your own car, unlike our parents a long time ago. “If you ask anyone over the age of thirty years, which to him means mobility, he is likely to meet transport,” says Connelly.
“If you ask someone under the age of thirty, chances are high that he will answer: mobile phones.”
Task Connelly will be to look to the future, to challenge our prejudices and help one of the most famous automotive companies in history. It works in a brand new Ford research center in Silicon valley, which opened in the beginning of the year. The very existence of the new laboratory reflects the growing importance of custom electronics for users both inside and outside of the car, admits Connelly.
“We know what you need to know about cars; the company has no shortage of automotive experts. But when you cross the threshold beyond which the car ceases to be? So we have to rethink our position in the market.”
Former Ford CEO Alan Mulally talked about his company a consumer electronics company, and new CEO mark fields likes to speak of it as a “mobile” company. It could cause misunderstandings in Detroit, the birthplace of the American automobile industry. The word “mobility” may seem like a small change, but it shows a big shift in thinking.
“I think we at Ford want to position yourself as a innovator, which means that we need to think about the future, as nobody has yet thought about,” says Connelly. “This is not new for us,’ she continues. — Henry Ford is credited with the statement that in his day, when he asked the people what they want, they were saying [something] “faster horses””.
What Connelly thinks about what will be the future of cars and how it will gradually come to this?
“We had a good enough conversation about 2, 5, 10, 15, 25 years, she says. — So I think about the year 2050. It at arm’s length, but will be radically different from the world we know today. Today, the world population is seven billion people. By 2050, according to conservative estimates, it will be nine billion. We will see more congregations, more urbanization, more cities. In Beijing, people spend on travel five hours a day. Add another couple billion people, and imagine how much things will get worse”.
Connelly believes that the situation is that we have to challenge our habitual notions of the future life will not be what we know it is good or bad. Cars will become less accessory lifestyle, a status symbol, and more — something that we have to use from time to time, as a vacuum cleaner or a ladder.
We will look for the cheapest and most functional way to get from point a to point B, not stuck in traffic. We can rent Bicycle, motorcycle, read for an hour in the car and go home, calling a stranger on the phone. This change will mean a big shift for manufacturers. This shift Connelly hopes to have Ford.
“Even if we consider the car as a utilitarian technique, how to make it better, personalna, customized, perfect?”. We can all benefit from the work that will be conducted by destroyers and creators of transport industries, but only if we are willing and able to recognize the change that’s happening.
Connelly does not want to go into details of how we could personalise their cars, but the future of personalization seems very mixed, even if we won’t possess your own transport. In the end, the car can automatically adapt to the preferences of the driver.
The farther into the future, the more the car will reflect the personality of the driver. Just because you have not bought and do not own a red Ferrari in 2015, doesn’t mean you can’t project her image on the outside of the glass. The question is, will that drivers of the future?
On materials BBC