Mark Walton: let car makers make cars

It was so easy back in the ’50s and ’60s: car manufacturers just made cars and their future looked totally assured. Ford didn’t worry about IBM; Austin Morris didn’t consider NASA a competitor; and Citroën was too busy making 2CVs to be thinking about mobile phones or music streaming. Fast forward to 2021 and the manufacturers are engaged in an existential fight to the death, and it’s ugly like a sack full of cats. As if launching the latest turbodiesel SUV wasn’t enough to worry about, they’re now doing that while simultaneously developing autonomous driving software and touchscreen technology, funding a backburner skunkworks hydrogen fuel-cell project (just in case) and working out how to post videos on TikTok. Meanwhile, the bosses of Honda, Toyota, Ford, BMW, GM, Mercedes and VW woke up one morning to find that Tesla was worth more than all of them combined. How the hell did that happen? Tesla’s a minnow – it only sold half a million cars last year.

Then there’s driverless cars. Just two or three years ago, everyone was certain autonomy was the future. It was a reassuring future, too, one that car bosses could understand: same product, different software, right? Now even that bandwagon is veering south. Back in December, Uber sold its self-driving division, having grown tired of pumping a reported $20 million a month into the project while autonomously driving itself precisely nowhere; and John Krafcik, chief executive of Waymo, Google’s autonomous-car spin-off, recently described his work as an ‘extraordinary grind’, which sounds like he’s on the verge of a breakdown rather than a breakthrough. ‘It’s a bigger challenge than launching a rocket and putting it into orbit around the Earth,’ Krafcik told the Financial Times, while shaking his head and staring glumly out the window.

The only consolation for all those old-school car CEOs is the knowledge that as recently as 2019 Elon Musk promised to have a million robotaxis on the road by now; and this year Tesla was supposed to make its first car without steering wheels or pedals. To quote Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons: ‘Ha ha.’ So now what? Where is all this heading? Invest in lithium gigafactories, knowing there’s an ecological scandal coming down the tracks? Pump billions into biofuel, and hope there isn’t a food shortage in Bolivia? Or diversify into peanut butter, and just keep quiet about the palm oil? It’s a nightmare at every turn.

This uncertainty explains why Hyundai recently bought Boston

Dynamics. Created in 1992 by an MIT robotics professor, Marc Raibert, Boston Dynamics has become mostly famous for posting terrifying videos on YouTube of humanoid robots running through walls and having a fight with a man holding a broomstick – eerily similar to that final scene from The Terminator when all of Arnold’s skin has been burnt off. Boston Dynamics also makes a robot dog called Spot, which you can buy for $75,000 if you don’t mind waking in the middle of the night to find yourself being coldly watched by dead canine eyes.

And the Hyundai division that bought this robot dog company isn’t Hyundai Heavy Industries – you know, the Korean engineering company with its own robotics division. Oh no, Boston Dynamics has been bought by Hyundai Motors, the Korean car company that makes the Kona.

Why? Same reason Hyundai is developing a flying taxi, I guess. Originally developed in conjunction with Uber, Hyundai is pressing ahead with its multi-rotor air taxi, the SA-1. It’s also been in talks with Apple about building an electric car, news that sent Hyundai’s value rocketing.

You see, Hyundai isn’t a car company any more. The Boston Dynamics press release explains: ‘By establishing a leading presence in the field of robotics, the acquisition will mark another major step for Hyundai Motor Group toward its strategic transformation into a Smart Mobility Solution Provider.’ A Smart Solution what? It’s like VW telling us it’s now a ‘digital mobility company’ and Ford describing itself as a ‘mobility solutions provider’ engaged in ‘multimodal journey planning’.

Truth is, the car manufacturers don’t know what the hell they’re supposed to be doing any more.