Bored with cars
The Ford Model T – the template for modern car design.
When I was 20 I wanted fast cars . . . I wanted to drive fast and own the most beautiful car available.
Now I’m bored with cars, and I has nothing to do with ecology or the dangers of speeding or spending a half year’s salary on something that looses 25 percent of its value the moment you turn it on for the first time.
My problem is that car design sucks. For an industry that has, or I should say had, so much cash, the fact that since the Fords of the turn of the 20th century, what has fundamentally changed in car design? Not a whole lot. We still have 4 wheels, a petrol engine with 4-12 cylinders and space for a fixed number of people.
Sure, cars are now computers, they can beep at you in 30 different languages and you can climate control your own area of the car, but where is the car that can detach is rear section when it is only needed for 2 people? Where is the double decker car? Where is the car that can be split into 2 motor bikes and we’re not even talking about alternative fuels.
There are so many reasons for car design to evolve. All you need to do is stand on a pavement during rush hour and count the number of cars that have 1 person in them. A brief Google search shows that in Scotland 60 percent of all journeys have just the driver and less than 5 percent are full occupancy. Yet the modular car doesn’t exist.
Cars are noisy and polluting and turn totally normal and rational people into aggressive jerks, yet no quiet and clean cars have been designed.
My guess is that things will change, there seems to be no future for the car as it is today, but I’m not expecting anything soon.
