Great quote: "Buyers seek greater individuality and extra features from their cars"
The global automotive industry is facing its biggest challenge since the 1970s oil crisis. Adding to over-capacity, and expansion by Korea and other Asian car makers, is the prospect of China emerging as an exporter.
Full list of articles:
China looms in rear view mirror
Block exemptions: Big dealers look at the long term
Components: Why the road to regeneration can be so bumpy
Future fuels: Backed into a tight corner over emissions
Premium brands: Jaguar looks back on an annus horribilis
Motor sport: Rival puts Ecclestone to the test
Consumerism: Striving to be trendy and flexible (*)
The intelligent car: How to interact with the latest top model (*)
Asia: After the crisis, the fightback
...the article (*) are in this page.
Consumerism: Striving to be trendy and flexible By Maurice Glover Published: March 1 2005 07:23 | Last updated: March 1 2005 07:23
A proliferation of four-wheel drive, multi-activity and crossover vehicles at the Geneva Motor Show bears testimony to a succession of sharp shifts in consumer tastes.
Examples of the saloons and estates that used to make up the backbone of family transport are scant as the motor industry strives to satisfy the increasingly complex demands that influence car purchase.
In spite of being encouraged to mark the centenary of the event by devoting stand space to exhibits of historical interest, manufacturers are more mindful of ever-increasing competition - and the fact that the widest range of choice is now de rigueur across the mass-market sectors.
“It is no longer enough to offer a multi-purpose vehicle or a sports coupe along with your compact hatchback range, even if you provide the customer with a number of different brand options in addition. You now also have to provide flexibility within each of your product offerings,” says Richard Parry-Jones, Ford Motor chief technical officer and group vice-president of product development.
Traditional market segments have been fragmented in the drive to cater for motorists who expect more from the family car. Ford, like its principal rivals, is making substantial investments in the concepts and technologies it hopes will steer it toward the more diverse and flexible products it needs to stave off challengers that now include ambitious south-east Asian manufacturers.
The situation is in stark contrast to the halcyon days of the last decade when derivatives of high-volume models often opened up extra revenue streams and sometimes even provided the “halo” products that attracted more potential buyers into the showrooms.
Executives at Ford Europe have fond memories of the Puma, a low-slung coupe version of the Fiesta. They regarded the car as a fashion item having limited appeal but the concept proved such a success that 12 months had to be added to the production run. As a result, more than 120,000 examples were built to add to the profitability of the donor vehicle.
“I wouldn’t say we made a fortune out of the Puma but you could say it was a nice little earner in the days when we followed a strategy where underpinnings, structure and suspension attachment points of the car were defined as platform parts. This was the system that allowed us simply to add different bodywork, but now we operate on the basis of global shared technologies, which is a very different concept.
“Instead of having a common rigid sub-assembly, this is more like looking into a number of boxes, each containing Lego-style parts like motors and gears that can be used for different models.
“It allows us to use a mixture of modules and sub-systems, all part of a family and designed to interlock. The other key difference in the way we operate now is that instead of having just one team to engineer the platform and all the derivatives, many people are involved in putting the modules together,” says Mr Parry-Jones.
The Focus, which shares a common basis with C-segment products from Volvo and Mazda, Ford’s Swedish and Japanese subsidiaries, as well as being made in five body styles, is being hailed as an early success for the company’s multilateral approach to market fragmentation.
“The beauty of it is that while we achieve huge cost efficiency from sharing, we also retain the integrity of our different group brands. The only common items are those that have no influence on the feel, character, sound and harmony of the products, each of which must remain true to the brand.
“But more importantly, we also benefit by freeing up capacity for product development - I want more engineers to be working on product that is fresher and offers more variety to the customer,” he explains.
As part of efforts by its parent company to come to terms with added market diversity, Volvo employed a team of 11 women to develop the YCC concept coupe it is now showing at international events. It concluded that female drivers expect significantly more from their cars than men.
Mr Parry-Jones says the team has provided clear insights into how Ford can improve the appeal of its vehicles to women, who account for more than 50 per cent of the premium market in the US and represent a rising proportion of European buyers.
“The team wanted aids to make driving easier and chose an automatic gull wing door design that triggers the air suspension to raise the car when it opens.
At the same time, it also lowers the door sill to make it easier to get into and out of the rear seat. We’re thinking about that,” he says.
Volkswagen AG has adopted modular manufacturing in an effort to shorten the time it needs to respond to the new market pressures and chairman and chief executive officer Bernd Pischetsrieder claims the system promises significant benefits to all the German group’s brands.
“Work was already under way on the new Volkswagen Passat we are launching at Geneva when the system was introduced but it still allowed us to complete the project in 30 months. I estimate that it has also helped us reduce our total investment in bringing the model to market by at least 10 per cent.
“One of the biggest problems we face is keeping pace with the changes that have added so many different facets to marketing.
Buyers seek greater individuality and extra features from their cars and the only way we can respond to these demands without increasing our prices is to be more efficient at the manufacturing level,” he says.
The sixth-generation Passat is 62mm longer, 74mm wider and 10mm taller than its predecessor.
The first D-segment car with an electronic parking brake and a 230 volt power supply to charge laptop computer batteries, it has superior equipment levels but will cost no more when it goes on sale in Germany next week.
Business Reports / Motor industry 2005 The intelligent car: How to interact with the latest top model By Tony Lewin Published: March 1 2005 08:37 | Last updated: March 1 2005 08:37 http://news.ft.com/cms/s/bb37863a-896a-11d9-aa18-00000e2511c8,dwp_uuid=62d56330-867d-11d9-8075-00000e2511c8.html
It used to be a mantra within the auto industry that even the humblest of family hatchbacks had more computing power than the spacecraft which took US astronauts to the moon.
Today, however, that boast is in need of updating. The latest cars - especially if they are state-of-the-art luxury ones - probably harness more megabytes and megahertz than Nasa at the time of the moonshot.
A decade or more ago the automotive computer made the all-important leap out of the engine bay - where its principal job was to look after ignition and fuel injection - and began controlling other functions around the vehicle, too.
Now, even a modest machine, such as an Opel Vectra, has a dozen or more microprocessors integrated into its electrical system, attending to everything from satellite navigation and emission regulation to the temperature in the cabin or the distance from the car in front.
Yet it would be a mistake to equate computer brain-power with intelligence. Intelligence goes beyond the merely functional cleverness of something unseen, such as engine management. It needs to go one step further, to extend the function to the point where the driver - or passengers - can directly see, feel or perceive a benefit.
Intelligence implies an extra interaction between the person and the car, or the car and its surroundings. Today’s most intelligent automobiles can see through fog and automatically brake if a collision is threatened; they can work out the best route to a destination and suggest diversions round traffic jams that arise. They can correct skids on icy roads, keep everything in tune under the bonnet and decide whether to run on petrol, battery or even both.
Walk up to one of the current Renault Meganes and it will display a form of intelligence before you have even fumbled in your pocket for the remote key fob.
While parked, the car constantly scans all around it, sensing the return of the key holder. The key card, which can remain tucked away in the driver’s wallet, briefcase or handbag, triggers an electronic interrogation sequence with the car. The doors will then automatically unlock. So long as that same card is within the vehicle, the engine will start with the push of a button rather than the twist of a key.
This kind of sophisticated interaction has now become routine, even on a low-priced car such as the Megane. An extension of this thinking into the luxury class will soon - and in some cases already does - have the vehicle pre-conditioning itself for the approaching driver, switching systems such as the seat position, climate control, audio, and even transmission, to his or her preferred settings.
These are merely some of the simplest and most directly beneficial ambassadors of the growing trend towards intelligence in the cars we drive.
Other examples are satellite navigation, where DVD-based mapping is providing faster response times and much broader coverage, and the Fiat group’s interactive Connect service. This combines telephone, navigation and entertainment in a single entity. It allows drivers to speak to a call centre operator for travel advice, to locate shops or hotels, to book theatre or sports tickets or airline flights. The operator can remotely programme the driver’s on-board navigation to take him to his destination.
Nevertheless, these unquestionably intelligent applications of communications technology have been slow to take off: GM’s pioneering but flawed On-Star system, in the US, has found it hard to retain customers after the initial trial period. There has been a marked reluctance to take up pricey add-on services.
Both On-Star and Connect are examples of what the auto industry once hailed as the coming telematics revolution - a much-hyped jump into a more intelligent automotive environment, but one that has yet to fulfill its promise.
Huge revenue streams were predicted for the automotive on-line services market; precious little has materialised. On-Star and Connect are mainly valued for their post-accident SOS functions and for remote door unlocking, especially appreciated in the US.
The next likely trends will seek to make the car more like an extension of the office or home, with internet access, facilities for downloading music, e-mails and messages, television for passengers and off-board navigation.
Some show cars have appeared with built-in hard drives for bulk storage of music and video, but the question of how this drive should be loaded with data remains to be resolved. Even the routine exchange of data for navigation and communication will impose serious demands on the cellular phone networks.
The advance of intelligent systems into the vehicle’s core hardware has seen a strange mix of controversy and complacency. Everyone takes for granted the operation of anti-lock brakes, for example. ESP stability control systems, pioneered by Bosch, are increasingly becoming a standard fit as buyers - and insurers - recognise their ability to improve control in slippery conditions. Yet resistance appears when buyers realise that the familiar mechanical control linkages are being replaced by electronic circuits - “drive-by-wire” technology.
Also hailed as the next big step forward, drive-by-wire offers the possibility of intelligent automatic intervention in a vehicle’s steering, braking or even engine systems in order to preserve stability or avoid an accident.
Many see this as one step too far for the consumer, who appears to balk at a computer program taking charge or, worse, failing. Mercedes-Benz, for one, has ventured no further than brake-by-wire, claiming reduced stopping distances as a benefit; even so, legal constraints forced the company to retain the conventional dual hydraulic brake systems as back-up.
Fellow German premium carmaker BMW has chosen the steering as its first semi-intelligent chassis system: AFS (for Active Front Steering) varies the sensitivity of the steering in relation to the car’s speed, and can even intervene to correct the car's course in extreme circumstances.
Significantly, however, BMW is quick to reassure customers that a direct mechanical link between the steering wheel and road wheels is maintained even if the electronics should fail. Significantly, AFS is optional rather than standard equipment.
Japan’s Honda, renowned for its pushing of engineering boundaries, has launched another variation on the four-wheel-drive theme where the car is able to apply different amounts of power to left and right wheels in order to improve the vehicle’s roadholding and its trajectory through a turn. Some ultra-high performance sports cars employ so-called “e-diff” electronic differentials to improve high-speed stability.
In each of these cases, just as with the intervention of ESP systems on individual brakes, there is an element of intelligent second-guessing of the driver’s intentions as read from motion sensors, steering wheel movements and other control activation.
Systems with such a fundamental influence on vehicle dynamics generally need to be designed in from the very beginning, or at least demand lengthy calibration procedures.
More cost-effective for automakers wishing to add an intelligent outer surface to their models’ appeal are the growing numbers of driver aids being developed by top-ranking component suppliers such as Delphi and Valeo.
Typified by the lane departure warning, fitted to the modestly-priced, family sized Citroën C4, these systems provide additional eyes and ears for the driver and thus help avoid accidents. The Citroën sounds an alert when a white line is unintentionally crossed. Other, pricier, cars have night vision systems. Some feature headlights that swivel with the steering. Adaptive cruise controls - pioneered by Jaguar - use a radar beam to maintain a constant distance from the car in front.
Honda, again, is setting the pace in finding synergies between systems. Its 2006 Legend has radar which looks up to 100 metres ahead and feeds its information to an electronic control unit. This unit calculates speeds, distances and trajectories to other objects in the vicinity and decides whether a collision is likely.
If the car is on a collision course, the system alerts the driver to brake - and if he or she fails to brake, the car does it automatically. If the collision is judged unavoidable, the system pre-tightens the seatbelts and applies emergency braking in order to lessen the severity of the impact.
There are two leading companies which may, however, be regretting this deep dive into unfamiliar and complicated technologies.
BMW is still reeling from heavy criticism of allegedly poor ergonomics and intimidating complexity when, in 2001, it introduced iDrive, the first software-based operating system for secondary vehicle functions. This was operated by an eight-way device like a computer mouse.
Nevertheless, it was Mercedes-Benz that suffered most humiliatingly of all as its innovative electronic hardware proved spectacularly unreliable in service and caused its normally exemplary customer satisfaction ratings to plunge alarmingly.
Senior business managers may find occasion to regret the car’s transformation into a mobile electronics showroom, too.
While a luxury car buzzing with phones, printing out e-mails, responding to voice commands and downloading the latest Wall Street prices may be an after-hours workaholic’s delight, for mere mortals it could be a very mixed blessing.
For where else can the hard-working chief executive better unwind from the pressures of the modern business world than in that perfect haven of tranquillity and glorious isolation known as the car?