The Next Big Thing In Transportation.

There is a way forward here. If carmakers believe they’ll be selling fewer cars to individual drivers and passengers—which seems certain—then the next most logical touch points for the industry’s well-honed brands are likely cities. This potential is already visible in city– and state-based data for vehicle sales. Seattle, Denver, and Salt Lake City especially love Subarus. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, loves muscle cars. The Bay Area loves hybrids; Oklahoma City doesn’t. Porsches are comparatively rare in most cities, but are the least rare in Tucson, Arizona. Cities are similar to consumers in that cars can express the values, desires, and functional requirements for both of them. The reason Seattle loves its Subarus is because Seattleites love the outdoors, small carbon footprints, and multisport adaptability, making the Outback and Forester popular.

From a business and design standpoint, this potential is thrilling, because we haven’t yet explored what a vehicle designed specifically for a certain kind of city and its citizens looks and feels like. The vehicles we need in a city like Addis Ababa are likely very different from those tailored to a place like Zurich. And while we don’t need a unique vehicle for every city on the planet, our diversity of cities—and their social characteristics, size, terrain, weather, and so forth—is an opportunity that would require more rather than fewer car brands.

Expanding Cars Beyond Our Existing Conceptions.

There’s another way forward for carmakers wanting to make more than mobile boxes for us. Understanding this way forward starts with understanding that, while autonomous vehicles will operate very differently than our current automobiles, our conception of these future vehicles still borrows a lot—and likely too much—from existing vehicles. Current prototypes of autonomous vehicles mostly show cars that we can use for sleeping or meeting with others. The former is probably a reflection of our sleep-deprived culture and its subsequent interest in designing better ways to rest while the latter is less clear; many of us could use more sleep, but is the modern workplace culture really in search of more meetings?

Our mental model of future vehicles is likely short-sighted. Even more importantly, our existing markets for vehicles might appear very narrow decades from now. As more and more of us live in bigger and bigger cities, we’ll need vehicles that do more than just move people from A to B. We’ll need all sorts of cars to be cars but also un-cars. Cars that act like cars sometimes and then have an altogether different superpower at other times. We’ll need school buses that double as mobile delivery lockers when they’re not transporting kids. We’ll need autonomous micro-apartments for older citizens who split time between locales. And, yes, we’ll need those vehicle boxes that integrate all kinds of new services and experiences into moving people or stuff around.

Like the prospect of designing cars specifically for certain kinds of cities, developing un-cars is a potentially transformative design opportunity for carmakers and the beginning of a more efficient, convenient, and personalized way of life in cities. That’s because un-cars expand the role vehicles can play in our future lives, creating benefits we haven’t even yet anticipated. Realizing this opportunity will require more from carmakers—not less, and more than a duopoly of them.

Illustrations by David Smith

Originally published in Fast Company