I’ve been reviewing cars for a living for nearly two decades. Each year I’m in and out of more new vehicles than there are weeks in the calendar, sampling everything from behemoth SUVs to sleek EVs to rough-and-tumble pickups. And yet these days, regardless of what might be parked in my driveway, the same question echoes in my head nearly every time I slide out from behind the wheel: have automakers lost sight of what a car actually is?
That same basic interrogation rears its head with every new automotive press release that appears in my inbox, hyping all manner of technologies, features and services that, at best, are only tangentially associated with the actual act of driving.
Here’s a random sample: Your phone is now your car key (and a tracking device). Your SUV comes with a “driver alertness” camera (that can’t recognize eyeglasses). Your steering-wheel buttons can tackle thousands of tasks (just not when you’re wearing winter gloves). There’s an enormous screen that expects you to talk to it (if only it understood sentences above a third-grade level). Oh, and there’s a gaming console in your car now, too.
Because that’s what you use your vehicle for, right? Video games. Shopping. Composing lengthy business emails. Ordering food. Investing in NFTs. Hanging out with an AI chatbot. Snapping selfies with a camera that’s totally not spying on you built into the rearview mirror. Setting that selfie as your car’s “wallpaper.”
Oh, I’m sorry, you have somewhere to be?
The Auto Industry Has Silicon Valley Disease
Why is this happening? For the most part, automakers have been way out over their skis for the past decade or so as they frantically try to rebrand themselves as “mobility providers” and “technology companies,” anything other than the dowdy old concept of “car manufacturer.” A quarter century of Wall Street infatuation with Silicon Valley’s startup culture has poisoned the decision-making apparatus of these enormous, not-all-that-agile corporations, who are now convinced that the only future path to profitability is eschewing actual product development in favor of market share, stock valuation and hype. You know, just like the latest billion-dollar tech IPO.
This has had two shockingly deleterious effects on automotive design overall. The first is the constant cascade of frivolous features as denoted above, efforts that embrace a “tech aesthetic” look and feel for cars by relying heavily on software versus the tangible interfaces that have served the industry so well for more than 50 years. The conceit that software companies are at the cutting edge of absolutely all human endeavor manifests itself in copycat fashion in nearly every car, truck or SUV on sale today.
It’s difficult to see how any of these ‘features’ tangibly improve the driving experience. It’s much easier to see how they get in the way of the comparatively simple task of driving.
Some of this, somewhat paradoxically, is tied to cost-cutting. It’s cheaper to install a big screen on the dash and move as many functions to it as possible, thus eliminating the investment in tooling up buttons, knobs and dials. In other cases, it’s an attempt to differentiate from competitors in a world where most vehicles, especially EVs, are increasingly similar in terms of capability, performance and quality.
We’re talking door handles that disappear when not in use (never mind the safety concerns), gesture controls that mute your music should you accidentally pump your fist in the air while listening to your favorite song, and of course facial recognition to start your car (which is easily thwarted by any accessory dictated by fashion or required by weather, and potentially even your skin color).
In the real world, it’s difficult to see how any of these “features” tangibly improve the driving experience. It’s much easier to see how they get in the way of the comparatively simple task of driving, complicating nearly every aspect of car ownership. As someone who regularly talks to people about their cars, it’s also impossible to believe that customers are asking for any of this. Instead, it appears to be a top-down strategy that starts in the boardroom, filters through the latest buzzwords and leaves brands looking more desperate than innovative when it comes to the technologies being deployed.
You Are a Product in Your Own Car
There’s a much darker side to the automotive industry’s desire to move in lockstep with tech companies, and it’s one that’s not marketed with nearly the same gusto. Over the same 10-year slouch away from first principles of building cars towards some type of ill-defined software-based singularity, almost every automaker has elected to emulate the worst aspects of Silicon Valley’s surveillance-based capitalism by secretly gathering and selling its customer data to third parties.
Where you drive, how fast you travel, what you browse on your infotainment screen — that information is being monetized by pretty much every major player in the business. In rare cases this has led to rebukes from the Federal Trade Commission, but for the most part it continues on unabated as part of transforming the concept of driver privacy into yet another steady drip of dollars into corporate coffers.
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With each passing year, it becomes increasingly clear that the software industry’s approach to the market has been thoroughly discredited. With the world’s online user base already captured by giants like Google, Meta and Microsoft, these companies have shifted away from improving their wares towards instead wringing every last possible dollar out of their existing audience. Rather than innovate with products and services that truly meet customer needs, the internet, social media and the apps used to access it have transformed into a dopamine casino, with software tweaked to be less useful or efficient so that we spend more time using it, often so that our attention can be better monopolized for advertising purposes and data harvesting.
Is this really the model that car companies want to follow? A hollowing out of what was once a core business competency — building cars that drive well, are safe and easy to use, and relatively distraction free — in favor of an endless cycle of rent-seeking (subscription seat warmers, advanced safety gear that deactivates unless you pay up on a monthly basis), frivolous features (in-car payment systems, “Hollywood mode” screens), and the end of individual privacy?
There’s nothing inevitable about the current state of the industry. There’s still time to course correct and refocus on putting the driver and passengers first, rather than squeezing them through the same digital wringer encountered in so many other areas of late-stage capitalism. There’s also a chance for one or more car companies to admit that today’s strategy doesn’t lead to a better tomorrow, and pledge instead to protect owner privacy and develop software that fits into a well-designed cockpit and cabin rather than dictating its parameters.
Until then, we’re forced to deal with the endless iterations of a philosophy that seems to suggest modern cars should look and feel more like iPhones than any four-wheeled thing that came before them. I can’t wait until a brand breaks free from the brick and realizes that the human spirit doesn’t yearn to discover what’s behind the next icon-push when sliding behind the wheel — it yearns for what’s just beyond the horizon.
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