Let’s just stay out of autos, shall we?
TUN Dr Mahathir Mohamad continues to extol the virtues of a made-in-Malaysia car.
Luckily no one’s interested, a point that he, too, noted with some of his trademark sarcasm. Have you noticed that this New Malaysia is very opinionated?
On the other hand, maybe we were always like that, only covertly then but quite openly now. Take driving for instance. We have always had strong opinions about that. Example: the person driving slowly in front of you is always an idiot while the person who zooms past you is invariably a maniac.
Back to this car business. The global auto industry is going through a period of ferment and with very good reason. There are new players entering a field once long dominated by 10 or so big players: names like Tesla, Microsoft, Apple and Google are now in the picture and it’s making even the big boys worried.
These tech companies well know that the car of the future will probably be electric, is likely to be driverless, and will essentially be a computer on wheels. That’s why these information technology giants – awash in funds for research and development – are jumping on the bandwagon.
Now I am not putting down our IT talent but so far our latest technological achievement seems to have been confined to calling this new administration Dr M 2.0. I mean, compared with Apple or Google we come across as kampung.com
Maybe the thing to do is to get all of us to drive properly. If there is one thing that unites all Malaysians regardless of gender, race, religion or creed, it is the notion that they are all above average drivers.
This, of course, is a fallacy. Before my daughter went to England to do a degree, she had her Malaysian driver licence. After she returned, however, she refused to drive any more in Kuala Lumpur. After the gentility of London’s roads, the sheer aggression of Malaysian drivers left her terrified.
You can’t blame her. Really. In England, they drive on the left side of the road just like us but here, with everyone parked willy-nilly we drive on what is left of the road.
Here, it appears that it is perfectly all right to park anywhere as long as your four-light flashers are on. Moreover, everything is legal as long as you honk, the louder the better.
And there are two golden rule about driv- ing along Malaysian highways. Always tear along the dotted line and two, he who hesitates is not only lost but several kilometres away from the next exit ramp.
Anyway, we were talking about not re-entering industries that are in rapid change like autos. Economics dictate that we should go into places where we have comparative advantage. Or better still, the government should just get out of the way of private business.
Take Grab, for instance. This was a Malaysian company promoted by Malaysian interests. But they could not get the permission of the Malaysian authorities so they turned to Singapore which flung incentives at the firm. The rest as they say is history.
The future, I am convinced will be something out of the 1970s cartoon series The Jetsons with robot maids, flying cars and talking watches.
It already may be at our doorstep. Earlier this week, a British inventor flew in a jet powered suit outside of a London store that is selling his invention for nearly US$500,000.
Richard “Ironman” Browning demonstrated the flight of his jet suit Wednesday outside Selfridges in London.
To be fair to him, it was his first useful invention after the London Patent Office rejected his first two offerings; a driver’s manual in Braille and an inflatable dart board.