PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD Below I reveal smart technologies that can help the automobile industry. Pretentious? Maybe, but with the once mighty General Motors in bankruptcy, Chrysler now part of Fiat and Ford as the last unfettered U.S. manufacturer standing, I guess I have a place on the soapbox. I mean as a citizen, I am part owner in the U.S. auto industry. And I'm not saying I am going to invent the new smart auto technology, I'm only going to point you to a couple of my current favorites. Here you go:
1. MIT's CityCar. The problem in the past, particularly in urban areas, is you had cars, roads and cities and never did the three meet to figure out a plan. The CityCar is only part of a current range of innovative thinking about how to move people around a city without getting stuck in smog-spewing traffic. The application of information technology to city traffic is one of the great opportunities that have resulted from unplanned chaos. The CityCar is really only a small part of MIT's urban plan to make transportation available when you need it and then provide that transportation for the next needy city dweller rather than shuttle individually owned vehicles around city streets and into garages.
2. The component car. The U.S. auto industry grew from many small manufacturers to a few (three) builders because the economies of scale demanded manufacturers that controlled everything from raw materials to dealer lots. But now we have the advent of electric cars. OK, the readvent of electric—the first electric car was developed somewhere between 1832(!) and 1839. Electric car engines hold a lot of advantages over internal combustion if you can work out the power systems. Shai Agassi and Tesla Motors are two firms that are seeing the hybrid car as an interim vehicle and are making the leap to all-electric. Do I see the return of many small manufacturers who use the same basic building blocks to create custom vehicles? Yes.
3. The smarter car company. When Peter Drucker wrote "The Concept of the Corporation" in the late 1940s, he set the tone for most U.S. management organizations for the remainder of the 20th century. But what was innovative in 1949 is bureaucratic in 2009. The idea of building lots of cars that would be pushed to consumers via marketing is just not viable in these economic times. I think the concept of build to order is about to reappear. If Dell could create a huge company by building computers to a specific order, you can do it with an automobile.
4. The smarter car ownership technology. So why own a car at all? Just as leasing changed the ownership rules in the 1990s, partial ownership or paying only for the times you use a vehicle makes a lot of sense, particularly in the city. Zipcar, which was a pioneer in car sharing, recently announced car sharing via the Apple iPhone. The idea of paying a lot of money for a car that usually either sits in your driveway or in a company parking lot is going to seem more and more absurd. Lots of room of innovation in this area.
5. Really far-out ideas that might make sense. One: You've got your Terrafugia flying ca from some MIT grads . Two: MDI has a zero pollution automobile powered by compressed air. Three: How about skipping the car altogether and getting a bicycle with electric power assist to help you up the hills?
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