Redesigning concept and role of the automobile

How would you like to drive a car so smart that it can guide you away from traffic jams, warn you when another vehicle is threatening to smash into yours, and flush out the most convenient parking space?

As well as being smart, this car is so eco-savvy that you needn’t even worry about how much environmental damage you’re causing on your journey.

Sounds better than beating yourself up for boosting global warming while stuck in your gas guzzler in an endless traffic jam?

Or panicking about the risk of smash-ups while slipping ever further away from your destination in a fruitless search for a parking spot? Thought so.

This vision of smart, eco-savvy cars free from the threat of congestion, crashes, pollution and parking spats could soon become reality, according to the authors of a new book, Reinventing the Automobile. Written by William J. Mitchell, professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with Christopher Borroni-Bird, director of advanced technology vehicle concepts at General Motors, and Lawrence D.

Burns, a transportation consultant, it explains how the design of the car and everything associated with it needs to be radically rethought to make personal transport cleaner, safer and more efficient.

The crux of their argument is that the current system is at breaking point.

It is too crowded, expensive, toxic, fraught, divisive and dangerous, both to ourselves and the environment.

The automotive industry has tried to tackle these problems by improving safety and fuel efficiency, but those changes have been evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Without reinvention, the crisis will deepen with dire consequences for everyone, especially those of us trapped in traffic-choked cities.

Having made a compelling case for change, the book suggests possible solutions. One is to redesign the car itself.

“Automotive DNA,” as the authors call it, is much the same as it was a century ago when Karl Benz and Henry Ford were developing the first mechanically controlled cars, powered by internal combustion engines and fuelled by petroleum.

Most of the 850 million vehicles now on the roads (enough to circle the earth nearly 100 times) still conform to that stereotype even though it is dangerously outdated.

Reinventing the Automobile favours its replacement by a “new automotive DNA” of electric-drive vehicles fuelled by electricity and hydrogen, and controlled electronically.

Ditching the combustion engine will give designers greater freedom in choosing the size, shape and style of cars, because they can place the battery and fuel cells wherever they wish.

This means that cars could become lighter and smaller, yet still be more spacious for their occupants.

The doors could be positioned on any of the four sides, which would help the growing number of elderly drivers, who may find it easier to enter from the front, rather than climbing into their seats from the side.

The book stresses the need for radical restyling, arguing that the iPod would have flopped had it resembled a “shrunken home stereo system.”

(Although the authors fail to mention that, so far, there is little evidence of automotive designers rising to that particular challenge).

Communicate wirelessly

Back to the future, and another proposal, which is to introduce what the authors call the “Mobility Internet.”

This would enable vehicles to communicate wirelessly with each other to share information on the flow of traffic and any unexpected incidents like crashes or sudden downpours.

Tempting though this sounds, it is impossible not to worry about system failure.

The authors don’t address that threat, although they are more thorough in anticipating other obstacles to their vision.

One is how — and where — will electric-drive vehicles recharge?

The book suggests that charging facilities could be added to existing electronic street fixtures, such as bus stops, streetlights, parking meters.

The book offers a thorough and intelligent analysis of the need to transform every aspect of the design of personal transportation.

NYT news service