BOOK REVIEW. Science fiction on wheels

Anyone who is a regular at motor shows will know that futuristic concepts are as much a draw at these events as are brand new road legal cars. And the truth is that over the last hundred years of the automotive industry, every whacky concept of one generation has turned out to be the reality for another.

In a sense, that is what Levi Tillemann’s new book The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future talks about. The only difference is, unlike the past when incremental innovation added features and efficiencies to the cars of the next generation, today we are at the cusp of a whole new paradigm in the concept of personal mobility. The world of electric power trains, self-driving cars and intelligent highways look tantalisingly close to becoming reality and, importantly, it is being driven by many companies that have never been in the automotive business in the past.

Tillemann captures the trend in the book when he says “the lines between automotive engineering and automotive fantasy are beginning to blur”.

The big names of the industry from the US, Japan and Europe are all there in the race, but the new comers with their disrupting, tech-laden self-driving pods are threatening to take over.

So, while Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen are as much at the forefront of rethinking the future of the automobile, the disruptors are companies such as tech giant Google and gadget maker Apple, and a bunch of Chinese upstarts, who don’t have the legacy issues that the former have to deal with, and are conjuring up a future of driverless mobility that is not science fiction anymore.

The Great Race is not the average non-fiction book that is more of a good read for academicians and management graduates. In his attempt to record the latest ‘electrifying’ developments in the global car industry, Tillemann has filled the pages with a veritable history lesson recounting the tale of the industry and the rise and fall of its players from its tentative early days of the 20th century.

But, by weaving into this story the fascinating profiles of the ambitious captains of the automotive industry, the ignorant politicians, the passionate innovators and the stubborn regulators, all of who shaped the car industry’s history, Tillemann’s work becomes a novel-like tome about the world’s greatest manufacturing juggernaut.

Tillemann, it would seem, is best placed to write a book on the subject. A ployglot who has been intimately involved with the automobile industry right from his youth, the author was the founder and CEO, of IRIS Engines — a company he started with his inventor father to develop more efficient engines.

Just like what the author’s erstwhile company attempted to do, the automotive industry’s obsession till now has been to squeeze the internal combustion engine to the limits of its physical and combustion capabilities.

However, though it is too early to write the IC engine’s obituary, it is highly unlikely to be the primary component of future innovation. There are manufacturers who still swear by the IC engine’s unexploited efficiencies, but the general consensus is that we are headed towards a future of dependence on battery power rather than fossil fuels.

The Great Race ’s chapters run nearly like a chronological sequence of events in the auto industry. It starts from the dominance of America, just years after the invention of the automobile, thanks to Henry Ford’s assembly line production.

It also recounts how Japan’s superiority and dominance of the global auto industry came about in the later half of the last century, ironically due to stringent American (particularly Californian) emission norms.

Finally, it talks about the emergence of China, both as the world’s largest market and as a hotbed for future innovation. Tillemann is also optimistic that the next wave will see America clawing back its supremacy in the automotive industry, though the companies that top the list may not be the ones that starred in the motorisation of the country in the last century.

The previous round of innovation in the industry was driven by the need to sustain our dependence on the automobile in the era of spiralling oil prices.

The next round of innovation will be driven by the need to keep our carbon footprint low despite an ongoing era of low oil prices.

And the concept of personal mobility will change to a point where people wilfully accept interdependence of being part of a streamlined system, after foregoing some of their personal preferences.

The smartphone generation is already exploring some of these possibilities with service providers and apps such as Zipcar, Car2Go and even Uber.

From here, where mobility is shared and not so personal, to a point where electric cars drive by themselves even as its occupants run their mobile offices and the car’s on-board batteries wirelessly draw charge or offer back charge to the electricity grid, seems like a huge leap.

But, the current momentum towards this future is so strong, that the distance could well be covered in double quick time.

Leading this movement are companies and countries that have dared to think differently and are driven as much by profits as they are by the need to stall climate change.

Though Tillemann’s book focuses entirely on the triumvirate of countries (US, Japan and China) who are at the forefront of innovating the future of the automobile, there is a lesson for us in India.

And that would be in the need for regulators to be ahead of the curve that the automotive industry would want to set for itself — in meeting higher efficiencies, emissions and safety standards.

Much of what we see in the modern automobile was driven by innovation that was in turn driven by the desperate need amongst manufacturers to meet an ever more stringent new regulation.

Tillemann’s words are by now more than just prophetic when he says “Cars are so integral to our lives that it is easy to overlook their transformative potential for human society. The changes we will see in coming decades are anything but cosmetic. They will alter our lives in much more fundamental ways.”

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