Mass Customization Gathering Steam

From the early days of the automobile until recently, there were basically two routes to a custom automobile. You either had to pay big money for one the way you wanted it, or you had to do it yourself. The end result is that today there are more and easier options.

As an example, think of the coachbuilders of the early 20th century. If you were wealthy you simply had them design and build a body for your chassis. Likewise, if you wanted to modify your car in the 1950’s you would do a lot of the work yourself. Tinkering in the garage, fabricating, machining, and welding in the shop, and putting it all together to create your very own ‘special’.

You had to pay with either cash or sweat or both.

Then came the folks who had the knowledge and experience of so-called ‘hot rodding’ who took things up a notch. They built turn-key limited runs of tuned automobiles for prices that, while still considerably higher than mass market, were usually less than stratospheric. Some of these cars were available through established OEM dealer networks. These were names like Shelby, Callaway, Saleen, Alpina, AMG, Brabus, and RUF.

The 1990’s saw import tuners take off and the aftermarket industry’s rise to dizzying heights which continues today. Automotive Aftermarket Industry Week is now the biggest event in Las Vegas each year.

Many automobile manufacturers now offer aftermarket parts through their own performance brands such as SVT, Goodwrench, Mopar, TRD, MazdaSpeed, Nismo, and so on. Toyota’s Scion brand even installs many accessories at the port right per buyer’s spec before shipping it to the dealer.

Now we’re starting to see high end automobile manufacturers offer personalization programs. Ferrari One-to-One and Lamborghini Ad Personam are but two examples among at least half a dozen which let customers choose from a variety of interior and exterior colors, materials, and design elements.

What’s Next?

It won’t be long before the ability to personalize your car before it’s built trickles down to everyday vehicles. The market demands it. The ability to spec your car just the way you want it from a huge variety of options is coming.

We’re going to see greater input from customers, more component choices, and more standards for ease of interchangeability and certification. Think of how common it is to see aftermarket wheels. Why are they so prevalent? Because they’re among the most interchangeable and visible parts on a car.

Modular designs, rapid manufacturing, less finished goods in inventory, and an overall bigger pie (market) is what I see coming down the pike. The result is going to be more affordable and more convenient customization that takes place further up the supply chain.

Hydrogen Falling Out of Favor

Policy needs to be set now for a long time to come. Yet if you look at all the rhetoric and proposals on the Federal and state levels, we’ve got a hodgepodge of all sorts of special interests clamoring for their piece of the action. With all these contenders jostling for position, someone’s going to fall off the wagon. And while I wouldn’t count it out, hydrogen looks like it’s been teetering a bit lately.

A headline this week from Automotive News (subscription required): “Hydrogen slips as a solution for the greening of autos”

The article contains a chart from the GAO (Government Accountability Office) which shows the current fuel production cost of hydrogen from renewable liquids as $4.40 per kilowatt-hour versus the US Department of Energy’s goal of less than $3 per kWh by the year 2017.

Does anyone see a problem with this? If it’s going to cost $3/kWh to make how much is it going to sell for? More right? And hydrogen is going to be used to do what in fuel cells? Make electricity. And for every 1 unit of hydrogen you put into a fuel cell, the theoretical maximum output you’ll get is 1 unit of electricity, but the reality will be somewhat less.

So how does this make sense when electricity is already less than $3 per kWh, the infrastructure to charge vehicles is further along than hydrogen refueling stations, and battery development will surely increase range to at least as good as hydrogen can get? Plus how is the infrastructure for hydrogen refueling going to come about?

All I’m saying is the sooner we start focusing efforts on programs that have the best chance of success because they are fundamentally sound and leverage existing technology and resources, the sooner we will come to a viable solution.

Longer Automotive Lifecycles

Following up on my last post, in the future automobile lifecycles should be longer – much longer. It’s wasteful to make and dispose of them while only using them for a short amount of time (say 10 years and about 150,000 miles). Why not keep them around for 30, 40 or 50 years and make fewer?

As we head toward fully electric vehicles, what’s going to happen is people are going to use more and varied modes of transportation. Different tools for different needs and different times. Urban, suburban, rural, and highway travel are very different from each other and the notion that one (car) is suitable for all of them is going to change.

Each of the vehicles in those areas will become specialized, and therefore get less use per year on average. They’ll simply take longer to wear out. On top of that, they should be designed to be disassembled and overhauled.

Why throw away an entire vehicle when you can simply and systematically remove parts or sections you don’t want and replace it with ones you do, much like with a computer or a building. This could be done with body panels, interiors, and chassis components in addition to powertrain elements.

Electric vehicles will be much simpler to modify and rebuild. There are only three basic components: motors, control systems, and batteries. Eventually everything will be like PCs with plug-and-play. You want to upgrade the motors? Change the wheels. You want to change batteries? Unplug them, take them out, and drop in new ones.

Because if vehicles can’t easily be upgraded, they may become obsolete in a very short amount of time, perhaps a year or two as new and vastly improved technologies hit the market.

And in the medium term why wouldn’t all those car company performance divisions provide the array of parts for people to customize their cars? Sure you might keep the same car for 40 years but you could always revamp it every few years with an endless stream of parts from the likes of AMG, SVT, Mopar, M, F, and TRD.

Cars should be designed for regular upgrading and enhancement, not planned obsolescence.