A better way forward
Afascinating trend became apparent this year while I was walking the halls of Messe Munich for this year’s IAA Mobility show. Cars intended for the city were getting smaller. For the uninitiated, IAA is organised by the Verband der Automobilindustrie (VDA – Association of the German Automotive Industry); it has historically been an all-out car event, but for this year’s exhibition made a bid to capture all mobility, targeting in particular bike industry labels.
You’re not here to read about the vehicle you may be trying to escape, of course, so let me explain what caught my eye and ear when traversing the halls. There exists a phrase ‘peak oil’, used to express the idea that the world has extracted and will now progressively use less oil as time goes on, largely in a bid to reduce carbon emissions. The same idea exists looking down the chain to where a lot of our oil is used: the car. We are, some might say, at the point of being at ‘peak car’ by default of the planet’s politics wishing to green up. That is if it were not for the creation of the electric car, of course.
Despite the billions now pouring into this reinvention of the motor car and the widespread policy adaptation baking in a shift away from the combustion engine, there exists one problem that even the most diehard motoring fans now acknowledge; that where a resource is finite you cannot push past certain immovable barriers. This applies to city space as much as it does natural resources.
The idea of smaller cars is nothing new, those more enthusiastic about motoring than I am will say. What is new is the number-crunching taking place by city planners and public officials. Studies have found that on average the car is parked for 23 out of 24 hours, very often taking up finite public space. Under the current trajectory the Institute for Public Policy Research has concluded that an 11% rise in car traffic is likely between now and 2050, equating to 10 million more cars on British roads than at present. In Central London the average car speed now sits at 7mph, just 3 mph faster than a healthy individual will walk.
Now here’s the kicker. Do you know what vehicle is far nimbler in traffic, costs less to own and run and takes up no more than a fifth of a car parking space? It’s a vehicle that will improve your health, get you to work on time consistently and won’t have any nasty environmental side-effects.
Yep, you guessed it. There’s another 50+ of them on the following pages…