Bill Needs to Talk to Joe
I have a friend in the auto industry named Joe Speed. Now I call Joe a friend advisedly because I suspect a lot of people consider Joe to be a friend.
Joe is the kind of guy who is always talking about stuff that sounds crazy – like printing cars. The problem is, you know Joe isn’t crazy. Ergo, printing cars must not be crazy.
Joe’s been around the industry a while. I first met him when he was at navigation supplier Destinator, but that was eight years ago. More recently I ran into him when he was promoting MQTT communication protocol technology for vehicle connectivity at IBM. Now he is director of IoT at the Linux Foundation.
So, I know what you’re thinking. Not another IoT nerd! Trust me, Joe is the nerdiest non-nerd on the planet. But he does have a way of putting himself in the position of promoting technologies that need to be explained before they can be sold.
Joe comes to mind for two reasons. First, his obsession with printing cars and, more recently, IoT (Think: AllSeen Alliance https://allseenalliance.org/). Second, Bill Ford published a column in the Wall Street Journal about the future of the automobile industry. (Greenautomarket.com summarized his comments here: https://tinyurl.com/n7433q8)
I couldn’t help but notice that Bill didn’t talk about printing cars or IoT. But there were other things he didn’t talk about either – like the fact that cars last for 11+ years and what that means for the software and hardware used to make cars.
Joe and Bill need to talk. If you get Joe started it won’t be long before he is bending your ear about Local Motors and micro-factories and crowd-sourced car designs. I honestly think Joe is nuts – but I know he isn’t. The effect is that he is impossible to ignore.
Local Motors is leading a global effort to create crowd-sourced car designs and bring small batch car manufacturing to the masses. It sounds like an oxymoron – mass micro-manufacturing – but if you think of micro-brewers you kind of get the idea.
Technology is moving too fast for the auto industry and something has got to give. Local Motors is that something. Rather than taking some kind of pinko socialist punch-card approach to cars (think Google), Local Motors wants to bring the power to the people or at least to a wider set of people than currently can bring cars to market.
And Local Motors hasn’t left IoT in the garage. The company is pioneering the use of drones connected to cars to see the “road” ahead when driving off road. That is certifiably cool and simultaneously nuts.
We are entering an unusual phase in the global auto industry where growth and innovation are shifting to emerging markets (Brazil, China, India, and Russia). Meanwhile, in developed markets we are looking for ways to maintain vehicle production and sales while actually discouraging the use of cars via usage, gas and other taxes.
In fact, the drive toward autonomous (self-driving) vehicles is actually being fueled by governments in developed markets that continue to strive to make driving unpleasant and expensive – between taxes, insurance and speeding tickets. No wonder we don’t want to drive anymore!
In China today there are 100 companies making cars. In fact, China continues to give birth to new car companies. In the U.S., we sweated out the Federal rescue of GM and Chrysler. What if that was the wrong path?
Joe Speed keeps telling me that we’re going to be printing cars. I think he is onto something. I am not quite sure what it is. But there’s just something about Joe that makes him impossible to ignore.
Chief Operating Officer
9 年Roger! Additive manufacturing isn't new and it isn't printing. What is new is that, just like the printer business, the technology is increasing its capability to offer ever more precision at lower and lower prices. No surprise there. You might recall my talk that posed the question: What happens when cars can be hacked? that was 3 years ago and here we are. From what I have seen firsthand, the auto industry (Bill Ford included - ESPECIALLY Ford) need to get a DNA change. One cannot build cars in the same manner as has been used for years - precisely for the reasons you mentioned. But it is not tooling, or factory design, or the inclusion of more robots that will be the magic bullet. What Ford and all the rest need to change is the PEOPLE and how they behave as a cultural unit. How many stupid, pointless meetings did I sit through in Michigan, Germany, Japan, Korea.... and on and on. How many times did I sit in a meeting in Japan only to have it called to an abrupt end because some other group had reserved the room? No matter how far up the food chain one goes, it is still the same level of stupid. Everything takes ten times as long because of all the feckless people involved in everything. By the time it (whatever it is) is resolved, technology has moved on. Too many people are involved. And the greater the number of people one has involved in anything, the greater the collective stupidly. One on one, those folks are mostly intelligent, decently educated, and nice. Get a meeting together, and it's all out the window. Mr. Green is afraid of Ms White. Mr. Brown hates Mr. Pink because of that thing at the board meeting two years ago, and they all want more 'headcount' and a bigger title and... blah. That's why the car industry can't keep up with technology. And it's stupid.
Technical leader in wireless communications standards, regulatory, strategy, and patents.
9 年Roger - thought provoking article. I don't know if 3D printing of cars will become cost competitive or be relegated to a niche, but if you look at the computer and mobile phone industries, you can see some trends. In the computer industry, Dell made its mark by letting customers build their own model to spec based on standardized components, and Motorola is doing some of the same in cellphones. Others offer only complete standard models, and I think Apple is the best example of that...you can put any case you want around your iPhone, but you don't have a lot of choices in the base hardware. I could see doing a 3D print of the shell of the car, which reminds me of the early Nokia phones with the replaceable cases...but vehicles are a lot more complex. The drivetrain is like the guts of the phone, but consumers will expect it to have a 10+ year lifespan, just like they expect their Camry or Accord to last a decade or more. In that sense, the automotive market is different from the computer or phone markets; the products are a lot more expensive, they need to be comfortable, reliable, and safe, and they aren't replaced every 2-3 years. Whether Local Motors can build a car that can compete with consumer expectations in the mass market - cost, creature comforts and reliability - compared to a traditional vehicle remains to be seen. Software is a different issue - certainly, we'll see a lot more customized software, and in that sense Tesla is leading the pack with their OTA software updates but that's not a 3D printing issue. I'm looking forward to seeing how the future automotive market unfolds...keep us posted!
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10 年Yep! Bill needs to talk to Joe. Sheryl Connolly needs to talk to Joe. Heck...everyone should talk to Joe. And Joe is nuts. He's just nuts enough to make sense. Not in 2 years or 3 years...but Joe's nutsiness resides just over the horizon. Nice post Roger...once again.