What is it with younger folks and cars these days? Or more
accurately, what isn't it?
Growing Up with Cars
When I was a teenager, pretty well all of my male chronological
peers were motorheads. Indeed, anyone of that demographic who wasn't a
car enthusiast was considered, well, a bit of an oddball. We typically
spent a lot more time on automotive topics than we did talking about
girls. We impatiently awaited our 16th birthdays and the rite of
passage - a driver's license. I got mine eight days after I turned
16, and I only waited that long because the motor vehicle registry
examiner only showed up in our little rural townlet for one day every
two weeks.
I, of course, had been driving, discreetly, on back roads in
relatives' and family friends' cars and trucks, and on farm tractors,
for years before becoming legal. This wasn't particularly unusual at
the time. It was a different world in the 1960s. Indeed, I was a
veteran car freak by the time I turned 16.
I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by cars. From my
earliest memories as a child, my favorite toys were my little cars and
trucks. A large proportion of my allowance went buying hot rod
comic books (a genre that, like war comics - another
category I avidly consumed - no longer exists except for collectors),
and later serious car enthusiast magazines. I still subscribe to three.
I was also heavily into slot car racing for several years.
It has been a lifetime's consuming interest for me, but as I say,
just about every male person I knew growing up, including a large
proportion of adults as well as kids, was interested in cars.
Teen popular culture in the '60s was strongly car oriented. The
Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and other chart-topping pop/rock artists of
the day sang about cars. I could go on.
Growing Up with the Internet
However, what sparked this reverie is a
new study by University of Michigan researchers that finds more
young adults these days would rather be cruising the information
highway than the open highway. In their study, published March 29 in
the journal Traffic Injury Prevention, Michael Sivak and Brandon
Schoettle of the U-M
Transportation Research Institute at Ann Arbor found that a higher
proportion of Internet users was associated with lower driver's
licensure rates among young persons - not just in the United States,
but in other countries as well.
According to a U-M press release, Sivak and Schoettle examined
recent trends in the United States and 14 other countries in the
percentage of persons with driver's licenses as a function of age. They
found that half of the other countries (namely Canada, Great Britain,
Germany, Japan, Sweden, Norway, and South Korea) have experienced a
similar age-related patterns of changes in driver licensing as the
United States, a decrease in young drivers and an increase in older
drivers proportionally.
They note that in 1983, one-third of all licensed drivers in the
United States were under age 30. Today, only about 22% of drivers are
twentysomethings or teenagers. Moreover, about 94% of Americans in
their 20s had a driver's license in 1983, compared to only about 84% in
2008.
This, of course, is not an earth-shattering revelation. Two years
ago, the Washington Post reported that today's texting and social media
generations have largely pronounced driving seriously lame, with only
about 30% of 16-year-olds having acquired driving licenses as of 2008.
In my day that metric would have been more like 90% or greater, at
least in my neck of the woods, but most city-dwelling members of my
teenage circle of friends and acquaintances had their licenses by the
time they hit 17 as well. With no Internet, no cellphones, no texting,
and no social media, cars were the central locus of our social
interaction. If you've ever seen American Graffiti,
you have a rough idea.
In a
commentary last week, Forbes' Contributor Dale Buss cites a Gartner
research finding that 46% of drivers aged 18 to 24 said they would
choose Internet access over owning a car, also noting that according to
the Federal Highway Administration, only 46% of potential drivers 19
years old and younger had driver's licenses in 2008, down from 64% just
a decade earlier.
Another survey by the car-sharing service ZipCar found that a whopping 68% of
Millennials, up 14 points from 2010, sometimes chose to amuse
themselves with social media rather than go out to see friends and
family, and 55% have actively made an effort to drive less - up 10
percentage points from 45% in 2010, mostly citing reasons such as
environmental concerns, high cost of vehicle ownership, and more use of
social media.
Has Driving Become Too Easy?
Needless to say, the fact that Millennials typically care much less
about vehicles than they do about the next iPhone is deeply troubling
to automakers concerned that most of that generation would typically
rather surf the web than drive a car. Eddie Alterman, editor of Car
and Driver magazine - a journal I've been reading since the early
1960s - thinks that one reason may be that driving skills required
nowadays are less engaging, noting what he considers a shrinking
selection of vehicles equipped with manual transmissions. Alterman
notes that even Ferrari no longer offers a three-pedal option on
several of its latest models. Ford hasn't offered manual transmissions
on its F-150 pickup truck for several years now either. I made a point
of ordering a manual gearbox on the Ford Ranger I recently purchased,
but Ford is discontinuing the Ranger in North American markets once the
last 2011 models are sold off.
Eddie Alterman thinks that if it were still necessary to learn how
to operate an entire car, and not just the steering wheel and
occasionally the brakes, cultivating driving skills would have more
appeal and younger individuals would find driving more enjoyable if
they could experience the sense of control imparted by the third pedal
- the excitement that accompanies a perfectly timed heel-toe
downshift.
Alarmed at the implications of an all-automatic automotive world,
Alterman a couple of years ago launched a
Save The Manuals campaign.
Marketing Cars to Millennials
Automakers are scrambling to somehow discover the way to greater
relevance for the 75 million strong Millennial generation by piling
more and more heavily wired (and wireless) feature sets into their
latest models, such as Ford's Sync infotainment platform or a system
Volkswagen displayed at the 2011 the Geneva Auto Show incorporating
infotainment control via a removable Apple iPad docked in the van's
center console that serves as a multifunctional touchscreen, hoping to
attract business from a consumer demographic that cares little about
(or is just oblivious to) traditional automotive attributes like
horsepower, handling, and the fun-to-drive factor. They evidently have
an uphill battle on their hands. Forbes' Buss notes that according to
MTV Scratch, a consulting unit of the youth-oriented TV channel, not
one car brand ranked in the top 10 in a recent survey of Millennials on
which of 31 product brands of all types that they preferred.
There are exceptions of course. My 30 year old daughter, an early
millennial, who learned to drive on a manual gearbox Austin A55 I gave
her when she was 13, is an avid hotrodder, as well as being highly
knowledgeable about computers and other electronic gadgets. Actually,
there's quite a bit of crossover, given the massive shift to
computerization in automobiles. A chip off the old block, she shares my
passion for cars but acknowledges that most of her fellow gearhead
friends tend to be middle-aged rather than her chronological
contemporaries. The tuner automotive subculture does represent a more
youthful demographic, but she's old-school, and loves big American cars
with honking big V8s.
The vexing conundrum for me is why the passion for automobiles and
car culture that so strongly influenced and motivated my generation is
attracting so little new blood these days. Economics is no doubt a
factor. The costs associated with owning and running even an old,
relatively cheap used auto have inflated obscenely over the past 45
years. However, it can't be entirely money.
The trend of youth indifference to automobiles began long before the
economy went into the toilet in 2008. Dale Buss says that the
importance of digital connectivity to Millennials appears to be
interfering with their interest in automobiles rather than contributing
to it. But even that puzzles me. Why does it have to be a zero-sum
equation - either-or? I like and enjoy cars as much as I ever did, but
have also been into computers for more than two decades now and find
that the two interests complement each other.
Why Not an Apple Car?
Steve Jobs, like the preponderance of boomer males, was an
automobile aficionado, in his case with a partiality for German
marques. Over the Jobs years at Apple, the notion of an Apple-branded -
or at least themed - "iCar" automobile has been dangled tantalizingly
before crossover Apple and automobile enthusiasts for years. Apple is
rumored to have a "secret internal department" at Cupertino
specializing in transport-related product development, although it's
unclear whether that means car accessories, car information systems, or
even a full blown iCar.
Back in 2007, Jobs met with Volkswagen's then CEO Dr. Martin
Winterkorn in California to discuss possibly integrating the iPod,
iPhone, and other Apple products into an automobile - with blogosphere
speculation about possibly even an Apple/VW joint venture "iCar"
project, but nothing evidently came of the latter. However Apple iPod
and iPhone support is now offered on many motor vehicles.
Could an iCar still happen? Steve Jobs, alas, is gone, and Tim Cook
and Jonathan Ive are post-boomers. However, Ive reportedly drives a
Bentley, indicating that he at least has good automotive taste.
iStream City Cars
Automotive designer Gordon Murray, whose name is most famously
associated the top-tier and highly-successful McLaren Formula 1 motor
racing team where he was technical director for a couple of decades
until 2006,
thinks an Apple iCar
could be a market success. "Someone like Apple could very easily make a
car," Murray told Pocket-Lint's Stuart Miles in 2010, referencing his
current preoccupation - his T.25 (gasoline-powered) and T.27
(all-electric) iStream city car designs, which were the focus of his
Apple car comment.
The T-cars are a radically innovative concept for a new type and
class of personal transport vehicle that incorporates Formula 1-derived
materials philosophy and technology coupled with chassis frame design
that provides an immensely strong structure ("safety cell") both in
"end" and "side" impact scenarios. Murray's iStream car
manufacturing process massively reduces the capital investment required
to produce the vehicle and also the energy required for manufacture,
and for which the design firm is offering a sort of turnkey license
arrangement to prospective marketers.
The iStream assembly process amounts to a complete rethink and
redesign of traditional automotive manufacturing techniques. Murray
claims it could potentially be the biggest revolution in high volume
vehicle manufacture since Henry Ford's Model T, and as such it would
dovetail harmoniously with Apple's innovative industrial design
philosophy.
The simplified iStream assembly process means that the manufacturing
plant can be jut 20% of the size of a conventional automobile factory, which could
reduce capital investment in the assembly plant by approximately 80%,
while the flexibility of this assembly process would allow the same
factory to be used to manufacture different variants or even different
brands simultaneously. The iStream design process also facilitates a
significant reduction in CO2 emissions over the lifecycle of
the vehicles produced using it, compared with conventional ones.
Murray's iStream T.2x City Cars are designed around a central
driving position dubbed Apple-esque ‚"iCentre", which offers six
six internal layouts within the same vehicle, configuration conversions
claimed to be easily achieved within 30 seconds.
The iMove Concept Car
Murray's iStream isn't the only Apple iCar proposal from a European
designer. Another is the iMove
concept, conceived by its designer to appeal to Mac-users who would
embrace driving more than just basic transportation and be open to the
city car of the future
Twenty-two-year-old Italian transportation design student Liviu
Tudoran says the idea behind his iMove concept was to create what he
perceives as an Apple Macintosh electric car engineered to break the
general idea of conventional vehicles for the year 2020 would be like.
"Keeping in mind the main characteristics, design language, and culture
of the brand," he explains, taking his inspiration from Apple Macintosh
products, and the lifestyles of people who use them.
Tudoran
notes that the Macintosh is an "exclusivistic" brand with a distinct
personality and a specific range of target buyers. He deduces that Mac
users are individuals who would also be eager to drive more than just
basic transportation - and open to the concept of an electric vehicle
designed to be a city car of the future.
Most of the iMove's body skin would be made of transparent materials
doing double-duty as solar collector panels, including the roof. The
all-electric, zero-emissions iMove, its body shape inspired by Apple's
Macintosh mouse. would carry three passengers and their luggage, with
custom interior configurations available to suit the owner's needs
and preferences. The iMove's luggage compartment would be
enclosed by a lid made of "an elastic textile material," and equipped with retaining straps
to secure oversized contents with the lid open.
As noted, the iMove's roof would be covered with solar cells to
passively charge the vehicle's batteries and electronic dashboard, and
openable in fair weather for a "cabriolet effect." Both the roof and
visor-style windshield/canopy will swing upward to facilitate easy
ingress and egress to/from the iMove's interior accommodation.
Exterior trim and color variations would be customizable to suit the
user's personal taste. Inspired by the original, rainbow-hued Apple
logo, the iMove would be finished with a photochromic coating material
that would enable the user to change the vehicle's appearance using
different preset themes.
Advantages for Apple in officially licensing an Apple-branded
iCar would include extension of the iOS ecosystem into the automotive
orbit, while the halo association with Apple chic would make such a
venture advantageous for an established automaker like VW. It might
even attract auto-oblivious Millennials, just as Apple's rethinking of
tablet computing revolutionized that sector. Hopefully, you would be
able to get an iCar with a manual gearbox too.
iMove images copyright Liviu Tudoran 1989-2011.
Used by permission.
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a conventional automobile factory, which could
reduce capital investment in the assembly plant by approximately 80%,
while the flexibility of this assembly process would allow the same
factory to be used to manufacture different variants or even different
brands simultaneously. The iStream design process also facilitates a
significant reduction in CO2 emissions over the lifecycle of
the vehicles produced using it, compared with conventional ones.
its designer to appeal to Mac-users who would
embrace driving more than just basic transportation and be open to the
city car of the future
Advantages for Apple in officially licensing an Apple-branded
iCar would include extension of the iOS ecosystem into the automotive
orbit, while the halo association with Apple chic would make such a
venture advantageous for an established automaker like VW. It might
even attract auto-oblivious Millennials, just as Apple's rethinking of
tablet computing revolutionized that sector. Hopefully, you would be
able to get an iCar with a manual gearbox too.
