THE FUTURE OF CARS

: changing ways of being

Thoughts after a drive from Brisbane to the Gold Coast on the M1, 29 October 2024 at 11:00am.

DD

We have too many cars in the world; they are the basis of all movement, all planning, all activity: we live around the pathways we make for cars. They frame, shape, and form the majority of our public places. One, of course, has to include all vehicles here, because they too, establish the framework for our lives. Subdivisions are made to be accessible not only for cars to access each separate dwelling, but also to be capable of providing for buses and rubbish collection vehicles – with roads designed for access, egress, and the ability to turn around and otherwise manoeuvre in spite of the preferred ambience and scale of things: our whole world is shaped around roads. Cities are planned with these arteries and veins forming their cores, mapping them, offering the life support purposes similar to those in the body; such is their modern necessity where ordinary life and its living kowtows to these mobility machines.

What is the future: more cars? It seems so, with possibilities of hydrogen, EVs, and other variations of options for propulsion all vying for supremacy in the necessity for what is now a cliché easy to ignore - ‘a carbon-free future to save the planet.’ It is as though the only solution is to try to solve the carbon problem rather than the car concern – their ever-increasing numbers are rarely questioned. It seems that all effort is going into solving one problem by producing more and more slightly different vehicles promoted as ‘green,’ rather than wondering if cars themselves have a future; if they might be the core of the problem that needs addressing. There is something narrow-minded here; something being blind-sided in order to avoid the unwanted answer. Here one thinks of Kodak, the company that kept on believing in film, even getting huge government grants to keep going in Australia, while the digital world boomed, and eventually busted the company, forcing it to change. Are car manufacturers doing likewise – never being brave enough to ask if this is the end of the car, but just pushing on and on with the private vehicle as we know it, complete with shrewd, distracting spin?

The logic of this approach that seems to ignore the observations of lateral thinking, even proposing the ultimate ambition, a driver-less vehicle, heightens the absurdity of the situation that only ever sees more and more vehicles on our roads, with more and more demands for ever more and better roads and parking areas to accommodate the growing numbers. The effort to obtain these envisaged futures comes with all the usual hype of desire#: vehicles with no, minimal, or even negative, (or is it positive? – who really knows?), carbon impacts that can out-perform all others in drag racing acceleration, towing capacity, and maximum speed, as if the ever-increasing numbers of vehicles on the roads will ever allow such extremes to be reached, let alone safely reached. We are playing a sad game to stir envy; one-upmanship: ME FIRST!

There is a madness here, something strangely irrational that plays with egos rather than looking at the issues that one can already see appearing on the highways that are constantly packed with end to end, side by side lanes of traffic crawling along to get from A to B; and cities chocked with similar densities at a standstill. This silliness is just not sustainable; something has to give. Building new motorways only aggravates the situation; encourages the inherent desires and latent madness. We seem keen to work hard on discovering different fuels that give the desired carbon outputs, as our calculations predict, but never talk about the numbers when it comes to making these millions of vehicles that come with an array of complicated parts that all require materials, time, energy, and effort to produce. What really is the final energy/carbon equation? Dare one ever calculate it to reveal the real figures here? What is the future of the planet, and life itself, if it keeps ploughing on, concentrating only on its ideas of ‘progress’ that involve ever-increasing quantity and a growing, belligerent laziness? The aim to maximise performance while doing nothing appears to be the new definition of efficiency that seeks out a robotic solution in everything while appearing to forget that even robots need materials, time, energy, and effort to construct: only the amazement gets attention.

There is a screaming absurdity here: something has to give. What are the possibilities? We can either keep pushing ahead into a world that fits itself around everything a car needs, as we have been doing, or think more about alternatives that concentrate on our quality of lives, of living itself. What do we really want? We will still want to get from A to B in the most convenient manner, so what are the possibilities? If we are so clever as to really produce driver-less vehicles, why not do this at a scale greater than the one-off car designed for a one-off individual, to ‘express’ this person’s egocentric status in the world with difference? Why not bullet-cars on highways for groups; and likewise, but slower in cities? We could work to scales here, of number, speed, and size to be appropriate, and to link these services into the existing train, tram, and aeroplane services.

The city itself needs to be considered first and foremost as a place for people to live in rather than as a place for cars to access. We have already had proposals for cities planned for walking – ten-minute places, so that everything is available within a ten-minute stroll: all services and all mobility possibilities. We need to consider the future of our existing thoroughfares. Some can be reused; others transformed into walkways or green strips; or scaled down for auto-access – automatic rather than automobile.

All of this possibility requires a change from individual importance to group responsibility; to the creation of a shared centre where everyone can participate happily in its outcome rather than compete for supremacy in both subtle and crudely obvious ways. We can see this struggle in expression today even in simple suburbia and in CBDs – the display of the urge to compete, to out-do the neighbour, to stand out, to be noticed – to be starkly different in every way: to declare ME! - even to have the right car, or cars as a supplement to enhance this presentation pushed by real estate itself. This game that establishes a hierarchy out of the battle to be noticed, needs to become a commitment to place and lifestyle that can make a centre, a town, a city, a place that can be enjoyed by all without the glare of the ME-ME-ME screams that are currently exaggerated and stimulated by our promotional advertising. So it is that we see car brands showing speed and breezy style, with beautiful ladies and suave gents; we see vehicles racing through country, across streams and through mud, all when the advice is always to avoid water and to drive carefully. We are constantly shown how we can be important, and how we can act to be ‘great again,’ to be seen, with what can only be interpreted to be self-centred, irresponsible, anti-social action. This needs to change so that we can settle back from this competitive searching for ways of being better and better than anyone else - the richest and the fastest; the most flashy and the most smug; the most stylish – to being content and happy in beautiful surroundings that are not dominated by the car; not shaped by the car; not overcome by the car with its necessity for performance, its noise and general pollution; its egocentric encouragement: into a place for contentment.

It might sound fanciful now, but the future will have to face up to the current stupidity that sees the world being saved by producing millions of vehicles every day, forever and ever – until we reach the AMEN. We need to start now before we have to make more and more commitments for the car that will all make change more of a struggle to alter; to reverse. The core is that we need to change ourselves instead of churning out more and more different cars that all seek to express our individuality in the same way as we churn out buildings that all seek to scream out: LOOK AT ME! – WOW!! while the world collapses into an emotional heap that we now talk about as struggles with mental health that involves the constant belittling of others with stimulating envy. Without change, we can only expect more and more of the same madness in life and the struggles with being that this creates.

The search has to be for contentment. Big corporations need to be managed rather than becoming the guides to our futures that seek to suit them and their fantasies that they thrust onto us as desirable necessities. We have to remember that cry of the 1970s: ‘small is beautiful,’ and act on this basis that needs to seek out and learn from the rich diversity of nature, our surroundings, not as green buildings covered with shrubs, but nature in tact, its little things – if there be any left before we realise how much we need it, how much it can mean for us, instead of being distracted carelessly by concentrating on our cars, their ephemeral shapely style and slick speed that create MY bespoke identity and inflate MY ego into a rage of conceited discontent.

Why nature? Nature discloses the ordinary integrity in its beauty and wonder in an extraordinary, quiet, unpretentious manner, revealing subtle qualities of the world of which we are all a part, aspects that are dominated, scorched by the flimsy flamboyance of the flare of the ego and its shattering dislocations.

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30 DEC 24

NOTE

The slick promotional material for the Cupra vehicles urges one ‘to fuel your obsession . . . discover yourself ’ - to give in to your indulgent desires and find out who you really are: a hyped-up, ego-centric performer seeking everyone's approving attention.

https://www.cupraofficial.com.au/cars/cupra-range/leon

A 'performance' vehicle.