In the 1973 film, “Sleeper,” Woody Allen is revived after being frozen following a botched operation. To escape the inept police state trying to terminate him, he steals a car that looks like a bubble, with frosted windows and no steering wheel. He simply tells it where to go.
The comedy was supposed to take place 200 years from now but, at least when it comes to the car, it could just as well happen in little more than a decade from now.
A recent concept vehicle from Mercedes-Benz, the F 015, can black out its windows, use voice commands to safely drive automatically to a destination, and passengers can swivel their seats to turn the big sedan into a mobile living room.
At least, that’s the grand vision – but it’s creating nightmares for an auto industry facing tough new mileage, emissions and safety regulations and the need to invest tens of billions of dollars in new and largely untested technologies. And traditional automakers face the threat of new and well-funded challengers, such as Tesla, Google and Apple.
“We all have a challenge now, the whole industry, imagining what the car will be like five or 10 years down the road,” said Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of the Renault/Nissan Alliance, during a roundtable discussion at the Frankfurt Motor Show earlier this week.
The challenges are many, but key among them are:
• The need to slash emissions of traditional pollutants, as well as global warming CO2 gases;
• Demands to radically increase fuel economy, the U.S. setting a 54.5 mpg target for 2025, and Europe pushing even higher;
• Ever-stricter safety mandates, even some automakers now setting a goal of reaching a point where no one will be killed in a car crash; and
• A push to solve worsening urban traffic problems, a situation getting worse by the day as more of the world’s population moves to megacities.
In years past, simply addressing one of those issues would have been a daunting challenge. Resolving them all threatens to overwhelm even the largest and richest automakers.
It’s one reason why Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, has said there must be major consolidation within the auto industry – and why he has been pressing General Motors for a merger of the two companies.
Renault and Nissan linked up nearly two decades ago and more recently entered into a partnership with Germany’s Daimler AG, the maker of Mercedes and Smart products. Together, they have already launched about 30 joint ventures aimed at reducing costs and pushing new technologies to market faster.
That includes battery-car and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle projects, and they may soon work together on autonomous vehicle technology where they’ve separately been pressing for leadership.
“This will not be a boring, commodity business,” said Ghosn, but one rapidly evolving.
Read more of the original article in The Detroit Bureau
