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.

The 150 MPG Fallacy

Electric cars are the way of the future. I’m convinced. But one of the biggest concerns I have is that media and proponents of electric hybrids continue to mislead and falsely state inflated fuel economy figures. For example, I saw this CNN clip today about an extreme-hybrid “car of the future”. And it’s inaccurate.

The energy required to move a vehicle is the same as before. It’s a modified Saturn VUE. So the drag and weight aren’t much different from stock. If anything it weighs more due to extra batteries and the electric motor. But for the sake of discussion it’s the same car.

That means it takes the same amount of energy to physically move it from Point A to Point B. Now instead of doing it with gasoline, you’re using electricity for much of the trip.

It should be acknowledged how much net energy is consumed during driving. There needs to be a way to equate total energy consumed for distance traveled. The reason is that a PHEV (Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle) is often recharged by plugging it into an outlet, and the electricity is coming from somewhere. A 150 mpg figure is misleading for PHEVs. It makes for great headlines but it isn’t real.

It’s analogous to saying you got by last week by eating only 2 hamburgers (i.e. gasoline) and neglecting to mention the 20 helpings of spaghetti (i.e. electricity) you also ate to get through the week. If you use energy from sources additional to the gasoline in a car’s tank, it should be included in the fuel economy calculation.

Finally, it is important to recognize that the true significance here is not that the car get’s better mileage or not. It’s the fact that it offers a way to wean ourselves off of oil because electricity can come from many different sources.