the best part is how it intimidates the guys...

A few years ago I helped a young relative learn how to operate a manual transmission.  The idea was that used manuals were inexpensive and it isn't that difficult.  It turns out there was a bit of serendipity as far as she was concerned - none of the guys she dated knew how to use one and this fact gave her enormous pleasure.

 

In 2010 only 6.7% of cars and light trucks sold in the US had manual transmissions.¹  As manufacturers continue to drop manuals from their lines a backlash of sorts has developed and a few niche models are doing very well with people who love to shift by themselves.

 

Cars are fascinating examples of user experience and user interfaces.  Development is glacial by the standards of the consumer electronics industry - most manufacturers are well into design of models four and five years out and there are ideas that reach out nearly a decade.  Power trains are enormously expensive to engineer and are not only used in several platforms of a maker, but are sometimes used in other makes.  The laws of countries and physics both weigh heavily on design.  Mix into this economics and an attempt to create a desirable looking vehicle and a good user experience and you are left with an optimization process with thousands of variables.

 

Automobiles and light truck are remarkable examples of industrial design.  They are Fantastically complex pieces of engineering, they represent the most complicate mechanical objects most of us own.  Over the years they've become more trouble-free, safer and, at least by some metrics, more efficient.²  We take it for granted, but the interface is very similar and predictable.   Furthermore most cars can accommodate a wide range of human body types - generally from the 5% female to the 95% male, but some expand the range on one side or the other.  I was impressed that Colleen could get into my smallish Audi Coupe as she's at the 99.99% male level in height.  She can't drive it as her right leg can't get past the steering wheel, but there are cars she can drive and someone who stands more than a foot and a half less can easily drive the same car after fiddling with the seat a bit.  In theory both configurations offer protection from crashes.

 

Small badges can craft brilliant vehicles for specific niches, but the costs of low production runs mean the buyers have to be well heeled.  A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting a few of Ferrari's top engineers including the engine guy who was largely responsible for the user experience of the drivetrain.  His title was very different, but he was in charge of how it felt to the driver - a defining feature of the brand.  Even the exhaust note of each model is carefully tuned and part of the art of engineering compromise.

 

As production volumes of a model increase this complex design process and comes with a cost.  Two years ago I was thinking of trading my 2001 TT for the current version.  I test drove one.  A lovely engine and transmission, but the cockpit displays and user interface were jarring and, in a word, wrong.  It had a frightening array electronics and several byzantine interfaces.  Compared to my simpler cockpit was like fingernails screeching a path across a chalk board.  It was like using Windows XP after having used an iPad.  I decided to keep my current car and worry about keeping it running for a long time.  

 

Many cars are much worse.  

 

There is very little flexibility and major change comes slowly.  The industry tends not to optimally modularize. Electronics constitute 20% to 30% of the production cost of a car and that figure is increasing rapidly.  But the electronics that are part of the user interface are rarely optimal and the pace of car design evolution is not in synch with consumer electronics. It probably makes sense for the makers to user modular assemblies that are swapped out regularly to refresh the car, but to date efforts have been lame - witness the Ford/Microsoft effort.  There is an enormous opportunity for innovation and partnership in this area, but there would be a clash of engineering culture.  Steve Jobs told Walter  Isaacson that he'd love to work in this area if he could start fresh.  My guess is he would have had to start his own car company to make it work - or at least to have complete freedom over interior design at the bare minimum. 

 

 In addition to cockpit electronics, this decade will offer fantastic opportunity for fundamental change as the nature of power trains is shifting for the first time in nearly a century.  At this point pure electric cars are basically a platform that is closely related to a conventional car powered by an internal combustion engine - largely because radical change would be too expensive and volumes are currently to small to allow creativity.  But the ability to move battery packs and motors around will allow a much richer set of possibilities.³

 

It seems likely that the US, Europe and Japan will not be the primary drivers of design. Indeed the next billion cars are likely to be destined for use in China, India and some rapidly growing third world countries.  These cars may be much smaller than what we are used to and may have less range and much lower price points.  Serious work is only in its infancy and will roll out over the next three or four decades.  All of the big manufacturers see this as perhaps the core piece of their long term strategies.  The megacity car or the post-internal combustion car...   Population growth and the need to leave fossil fuels behind will be powerful forces.

 

Of course there are some of us who believe human power and human electric hybrids have a place in the mixture.  It will be interesting to see how all of this evolves and if it changes the notion of where people live and what mobility means as much as the automobile did.  

 

So I'll be using a mixture of human power and an IC/manual transmission car for awhile.  At some point the IC vehicle won't be practical for me and I'll get a pure electric.  Hopefully there will be a niche that couples me to the act of driving as well as a stick shift and a clutch does now.⁴

 

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¹ Government figures show automobiles came in at 9.0%, but light trucks were much less and manuals are non-existent in SUVs and minivans.  In Europe the numbers are nearly reversed and automatics are comparatively rare.

² Engine efficiency per unit of displacement, power to weight ratio, fuel consumption per unit of power, and overall power train efficiency.  Where they have fallen down is in overall efficiency for moving people and payloads.  There have been improvements, but nothing like the other improvements suggest - it turns out cars and trucks have also become much heavier and this erases many of the technological gains.

³ Designers tell me that the potential for a much greater life of an electric car and the ability to have greater design freedom may mean you'll buy a car for 15 or 20 years and remodel it when you need to along the way.  Some of the concepts are very clever indeed.

⁴ The highly peaked power curve of an IC engine and its torque characteristics demand the use of a multispeed transmission.  People on bikes have similarly narrow characteristics.  Electric motors have much broader ranges where they are efficient and usely can get by with a single speed gearbox.