Mygreenwheels

Ash Gupta blog post:

Looking at the history of our planet, it was great catastrophes that brought about the big sea changes - the advent of life, the demise of the Mega Reptiles and the Ice Ages. Well, there's an uncanny parallel today, except the catastrophe is called "Le Credit Crunch."

The spiritual home of the automobile has been Detroit City, home to the Big Three, and from there the industry spread to the mechanised world. It's right then that the demise of the old auto world should be centred on Detroit, because like the dinosaurs, they did not see the change coming. But worse, they did not want change to happen.

The change has come because the market said "Enough! We want different, more fuel efficient, modern product," so the dealership footfall pretty much ... stopped. Only then did the US auto industry see the light. And now this is a world auto industry problem due to the cumulative effect of Climate Change + Energy Security + The need to respond to Government's mandatory requirements to reduce CO2 + Oil and Gas price fluctuations + finally changes in public attitude to the wasteful design ethic of the current and historic product lines on offer.

Now the scene is set for an all new industry. The stock markets are not leading this change, the consumer is, backed by government, an all new set of rules. It did not need to be this way. Let me explain.

I joined Ford of Europe in 1969 as a graduate trainee aged just 21, straight out of university with a degree in Urban Studies from the Edinburgh School of the Built Environment. I made a very deliberate choice. If I went into Urban Planning we could talk and plan about new transport modes, but if I joined Ford, then I could help actually make, that is to say manufacture, new systems that you could sell.

In the Fall of 1969 Ford of Europe took a a brave innovative step. They set up the Ford of Europe Transportation Planning office to make innovative vehicles including electric cars and magnetic levitation trains. They hired one of the Greater London Council's brightest Urban Planners to head up this new Department. His name was Phil Oxley and he was paid a stunning £100,000 a year in 1969. This was an unheard of salary for a planner at that time. I became Phil's assistant not long after and was employee #2 of this department.

Before I got there I had to do the usual rounds as a graduate trainee and one such was a two week stint with Advanced Car Product Planning at the Dunton Design, Research and Engineering Centre in Essex. I was so excited. First thing I met the head of the Department. Like me, he hailed from Scotland, and he went on to become one of the first UK-national main US Ford Motor Company Inc. board directors with a Green Card - a US citizen.

Eagerly, over a plastic cup of Ford machine coffee, I asked this small but powerful man, "So, is this where we are going to create electric cars?" thinking back to the world's first modern BEV, the lead acid battery powered Ford Commuta.

Boy, did I get an earful! And I should have seen it coming. Ford had just won Le Mans three times in a row with the GT40 and a metallic green GT 70 was sitting on a trailer outside his office.

"No way!" was the unexpected and angry retort. "We create real cars that the market wants here - Granada, Cortina, Escort and Capri. If you want electric cars you better crawl back to your Ivory Tower. You're not a student now, you work for Ford and if you make it, you'll join Car Product Planning."

I did, eventually, but only after Phil Oxley's Department, by then including me, was shut down after the first Middle East Oil Crisis. In Car Product Planning I became one of just 13 men in the central Bobcat team responsible for bringing the Spain/Fiesta Program home on time and budget and helping change the economy of that country.

But just think where Ford would be if Phil and I had been given the resources to create the BEVs and PHEVs that Ford announced at the Detroit Show this weekend. Ford would now be number one in electric cars and sustainable autos.

That was 1969 and now we are 40 years on almost to the day. The supply chain is crumbling, billions of shareholder funds have gone down the Swanney and the the world's car makers need innovative engineers and designers like never before. The catalysts and pioneers have been Think (Ford-owned until 2002 when it offloaded Think to KamKorp of Switzerland who allowed it to go under till recued by Norwegian investors, Think Global AS), Tesla, Tanfield and Modec who all make meaningful EV product, but now every one of those is pretty much facing the same horizon as the Big Three. NICE car company and Think are in trouble or in administration already and Tesla needs financial support. The big international car cos are moving in on the BEV/ PHEV scene - Nissan, Renault, Mitsubishi, Toyota and the rest. These are the opening shots in the coming War of the Auto-Worlds.

The stage is set for the biggest shake up of the mobility industry in 100 years and the outcome could all have been so different if the management of the car cos had only opened their eyes and ears.

In Scotland we have a load of people who say, "It's aye been!" meaning it's always been this way and so it shall be. Well, that sentiment has no place in this world today and "Aye Been" has to die in every language and dialect to be replaced with "OK, so what is the smartest way to learn from Apple and Google so tomorrow's auto makers can converge the technologies using smart materials?"

Will we see the Apple i-car before long and will GM set up a JV with Intel? Now the giants have crashed we can look forward to the fact that it's all change and there is so much opportunity for the smart transport design thinkers amongst us. Ford issued more than a dozen releases on this topic on January 11, 2009 and amongst those was this little BEV reprise. Worth a look. Go to the timeline, pick out 1969 and say to yourself, what if Phil Oxley had his way...what would our highways be filled with today? Is the Ford EV now too late to be one of them?