What the Auto Industry Can Learn From the Music Business

There's an argument to be made that what the automobile industry needs is not simply more technical advance-- a carbon-free power train for example -- but rather a major paradigm shift. What does that mean, exactly? Well perhaps the best analogy is the music industry.

The music business used to just manufacture things -- remember those shiny discs called CDs? -- but more and more it is being asked to provide a service, in the form of the songs you want, when you want to listen to them, streamed over the internet. In other words, the auto industry needs to think of itself as providing transportation, instead of cars.

A new book from MIT press, Reinventing the Automobile, fleshes out the revolution-not-evolution argument, and also paints a detailed picture of what the reinvented automobile might look like. The book describes a Jetson's-like future where a new breed of smart electric micro cars communicate with each other constantly over the "mobility internet." They drive themselves to your destination without crashing, collaborate to prevent traffic jams, and fold up when not in use. Furthermore, no one would actually own the cars; they would be shared or rented. The authors claim that such a car -- excuse me, system -- could be built today, with currently existing technology.

Almost by definition, "cars of the future" tend to look pretty silly (Check out Buckminster Fuller's 1933 Dymaxion. Ridiculous!), and Reinventing the Automobile's "CityCar" is no exception. But the book deserves respect. Two of the three authors are fuel cell experts associated with General Motors -- while the third is a big-brain urban theorist at MIT. The book itself has serious heft, as it is the result of half a dozen years of thinking and prototyping at MIT's skunkworks, the Media Lab. Check out the New York Times' seriously admiring review.
Image: Amazon