Driverless car of the future could be minivan
FOR the past 15 years, the Knoche family minivan has been frozen in traffic half a mile from the White House.
The Dodge Caravan with the snub nose and the faux finish has a prime spot, along with a 199ton locomotive, in a Smithsonian exhibit on the history of transportation in America.
“I liked that wood grain, for sure. Now it’s kind of corny,” said Gary Knoche, who was with his parents, Fred and Mary Ann, when they brought the van home in the mid-1980s. “I remember saying, ‘ That looks good.’ “
Now, the once-mighty minivan - overshadowed by the SUV, vessel of dad jokes and soccer-mom cliches, host of self- deprecating bumper stickers (“Zero to 60 . . . Eventually!”) - could be clawing its way off the museum floor and into an unexpected starring role in the future of transportation.
Tech firms are spending billions to develop the brains for self- driving cars, and minivans offer what some consider the perfect body for a transplant.
“The platform of that minivan is ideal. It’s an oblong block on four wheels,” said Timothy Papandreou, a former chief innovation officer at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency who also worked at Waymo, a leading selfdriving firm. “It’s familiar and it’s safe. It’s not scary. It’s not a Mustang or Corvette . . . It’s a minivan.”
Its humdrum yet roomy shape can fit enough people to make driverless taxi services profitable, or can easily be rejiggered for autonomous deliveries, the thinking goes. In May, Waymo said it will buy up to 62,000 minivans - descendants of the Knoches’ early Chrysler model - to build its driverless fleet. The company plans to start carrying paying passengers later this year in Arizona.
But the vision offered by boosters of driverless technology - including nearly flawless computer software besting alltoo-human drivers; broadly replacing individually owned cars with ride- sharing apps and robotaxis; and a new era of reduced congestion and pollution - would require not only solving major technological challenges, but also sweeping changes in Americans’ consumer behaviour and driving culture.
Chrysler first unleashed the minivan on the nation in 1983, and the practical workhorse carried Fred Knoche to his Detroit locksmith shop, Gary to hockey practice and millions of American families and their growing loads of stuff where they needed to go.
“The minivan is a little bit like blue jeans with Lycra - incredibly comfortable, but not particularly stylish,” said Peter Liebhold, a long-time Smithsonian curator who researches industry and technological change. “You had a little bit of room to move around.”
Chrysler’s designers came up with a relatively low- slung van that still had lots of space, headroom and legroom. And passengers could reach a third row of seats without having to climb over the back bumper, as kids did in station wagons.
It was a thrilling stretch of innovation for those who had spent years making more mundane tweaks to existing cars.
“They’re always just new wrinkles in sheet metal from the previous year. So here was a new concept,” said Burton Bouwkamp, 91, head of product planning for Chrysler in the 1970s when the idea was being worked up. “That was pretty exciting to us.”
The working name was the “garageable van.”
The idea fell flat with Chrysler bosses. Top managers thought their big competitors - Ford and General Motors - would have already beaten them to it if there really was a market, Bouwkamp said.
But when famed auto executive Lee Iacocca took over Chrysler, he had the “automotive savvy and the guts to go ahead,” Bouwkamp said.
“Now that you’ve seen it, how would you describe it?” Iacocca asked when he introduced the vehicle in 1983. “A station wagon? A garageable van? A bus? A truck? Or what? Actually, it’s all of these and more. The Caravan and Voyager can be whatever you want it to be.”
The platform of that minivan is ideal. It’s an oblong block on four wheels. It’s familiar and it’s safe. It’s not scary. It’s not a Mustang or Corvette . . . It’s a minivan. Timothy Papandreou, a former chief innovation officer at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency