Archive for the ‘automobiles’ Category

If you read this blog, you could have seen Toyota’s problems coming…

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Does anyone remember this post from nearly 3 years ago?

Toyota: The Inevitable Decline Starts Now
18 Feb 2007

It’s Toyota’s PR person’s dream: a front-page story in the Sunday New York Times magazine (by Jon Gertner), depicting your company as a comic-book superhero, slaying its competitors amid exclamatory sound effects (VVRRRMM!). And the article’s teaser hailing your company as not only “not only the best automaker in the world but also maybe the best corporation.”

The PR dream is the executive’s nightmare. Not only is it difficult to build from the pinnacle Toyota has reached; it’s impossible. The life cycle of industry titans lasts decades, but a life cycle it is. Ask NCR, Kodak, Xerox, Western Union, Sony.

Ask General Motors.

Forces beyond those under the control of any corporation conspire to bring it down, once it’s reached such an apex. The forces are shifts in demographics, culture, science–more than technology. Somewhere out there, those forces are at work, humming below the range of hearing, undermining the business model that Toyota has perfected over the past fifty years.

And, no, it won’t be a combined GM-Chrysler that eventually humbles Toyota. The US auto companies are deader than dead as far as the future’s concerned. Instead it will be a new company, perhaps born in a rural area not unlike Toyota’s home, failing humbly, learning lessons, remaining persistent, getting better, creating a vision for the far future, a vision far beyond the passenger automobile. Not unlike what Toyota itself once did.

Who are they? We’ll know in twenty years’ time.

(Illustration by Nathan Fox for the New York Times)

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More insight on the Honda Fuel Cell vehicle

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

If you read today about Honda’s new fuel cell car (here or here), you may be interested in a fuller discussion we had on a recent podcast.

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Posted in automobiles, corporate social responsibility, environment, fuel cell, green technology, podcast, technology | Comments

The beginning of the end of the oil crisis

Monday, April 28th, 2008

It may very well be a stupid statement. John Cassidy contended in a recent issue of Conde Nast Portfolio that oil prices would begin to drop as the high price spurred more exploration and production–and that was when oil was a relatively cheap $100 per barrel–not near $120, as it is at this moment.

But there’s no doubt that the oil replacement/carbon-reduction innovation machine has swung into high gear. Two articles caught my eye recently. In yesterday’s New York Times, reporter Michael Fitzgerald wrote about a new home still that can create ethanol from sugar, reducing carbon emissions (the owners say) by seven-eighths. And in Saturday’s Times, Matthew Wald discussed A123 System’s power pack that converts the Toyota Prius into a plug-in hybrid.

These projects very well may end in failure. But they are but two of thousands of important initiatives around energy diversification, conservation and carbon reduction. And that’s a recipe for dramatic change. As Rosabeth Moss Kanter wrote in Harvard Business Review in November 2006 (link – $$), “an organization is more likely to get bigger ideas if it has a wide funnel into which numerous small ideas can be poured. One of the secrets of success for companies that demonstrate high rates of innovation is that they try more things.”

And so it is with industries. More ideas at the top of the funnel means more, bigger successes at the bottom. The energy innovation pyramid is well-stocked, which means, sometime in the future, when petroleum is just another niche chemical, we can say it all started today.

Related:
Kanter’s Innovation Pyramid
Chevy Volt: automotive revolution or flavor of the month?
What in hell is the Electron Economy?
Shop Talk Podcast #6 – Todd Mittleman on Honda’s Fuel Cell car

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Posted in automobiles, energy, environment, green technology, innovation | Comments

Shop Talk Podcast #6 – Todd Mittleman on Honda’s Fuel Cell car

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

On this edition of the Shop Talk Podcast, I talk once again with Todd Mittleman, Director of Environmental & Safety Public Relations for Honda, this time about the Clarity FCX, Honda’s fuel cell car for the mass market, to be launched sometime in the summer of 2008. (You can find our first interview here.)

If you’ve ever wondered what on earth a fuel-cell is and how it can power a car, and how you can drive in Southern California’s carpool lanes with no one else in your car, you’ll want to listen.

Please right-click and save here to download the podcast.

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Posted in automobiles, corporate social responsibility, environment, fuel cell, green technology, podcast, technology | Comments

Shop Talk Podcast #5 – Todd Mittleman of Honda on Green Automobiles

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

On this edition of the Shop Talk Podcast, I talk to Todd Mittleman, Director of Environmental & Safety Public Relations for Honda, about environmentally-friendly vehicles.

I confess that all the “green” options make me a bit dizzy–hybrid, E85, fuel cell, all-electric, clean diesel. Todd helps put the various environmental considerations–fuel efficiency, emissions, carbon footprint–into context for us. And, of course, he talks about the cars Honda has now and in the future for the environmentally-conscious driver. It’s a very interesting conversation.

Please right-click and save here to download the podcast.

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Are complexity and design harming innovation?

Monday, July 30th, 2007

At some level, it’s makes sense that technological advances and the open-source movement have made tinkering with and improving on our favorite products easier. Think of Google Maps mash-ups, Firefox add-ons, videogame hacks, etc.

Yet the proliferation of closed, highly-designed manufactured products (think iPod) limits much of the innovation on these products to the companies that create them (and perhaps select partners). Such is the hypothesis posed by G. Pascal Zachary in Sunday’s New York Times–”In a Highly Complex World, Innovation from the Top Down” (link).

And I can see his point. Think about cars. When I was a kid, you could open the hood of a car and see the engine’s parts clearly; there was plenty of open space to work, and parts were easy to buy and, to some extent, install. Lots of people worked on their own cars.

Now open your car’s hood. Chances are the engine is hermetically sealed, surrounded by wires and electronics and plastic, with not a square inch of empty space inside the hood. When’s the last time you even changed your own oil?

On the other hand, the web and most recently the web 2.0 tools that have come into wide use can make everybody an innovator in terms of virtual goods–wikis, photo collections, videos, playlists, etc.

So, as manufactured products close up, information products open up. Whereas a teenager in the 1970’s had a Radio Shack electronics project kit, now he has Facebook’s API. The net result to innovation is hard to calculate. But the emergence of Google, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, etc., would argue that innovation is alive and well.

That’s progress for you. You just hope your car, or your iPod, doesn’t break.

Posted in New York Times, automobiles, creativity, design, innovation, product development, web2.0 | Comments

The race is on for plug-in hybrids

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

Today’s New York Times writes that Toyota is preparing to test a prototype plug-in hybrid, creating a possible competitor to the Chevy Volt. Maybe this electron economy thing will happen after all!

By the way, Toyota, if you need test drivers in the Northeast US, drop me a line.

Posted in automobiles, green technology, innovation, sustainability, technology | Comments

Chevy Volt: automotive revolution or flavor of the month?

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

I was delighted to read an article about General Motors’ emphasis on green technology in today’s Wall Street Journal (link – $$). GM has announced that the Chevy Volt, a mostly electric car with a small gas engine to recharge the battery en route, will be the linchpin of its effort to “change the DNA of the automobile.” But hidden in the article were a few clues proving that GM’s commitment to green technology is paper-thin:

GM executives acknowledge it is unclear whether these advanced-technology vehicles will ever come to market, much less generate a profit. The auto maker, as with companies in other industries, has concluded it can no longer wait and see how the public debate on global warming and the world economy’s increasing thirst for oil plays out. A big consideration in this change: GM fears it will sell fewer cars if consumers associate it with gas guzzlers.

“We have to have people think we are part of the solution, not part of the problem,” said Lawrence Burns, GM’s vice president for research and development and global planning. The rush to produce its electric vehicle, known as the Chevrolet Volt, is in large part an effort to show consumers that “we get it” on climate change, Mr. Burns said. “It’s not just words. It’s deeds.”

In other words, it’s a PR stunt. If gas prices plunged tomorrow, the Volt would disappear faster than day-old bread.

It’s only been two years since GM’s last attempt to reinvent the automobile. Contrast this to Toyota’s consistent focus on green technology for more than a decade (here’s information on an environmental award the company received in 1998 for the first-generation Prius).

I’m a fan of electric cars (see a previous post on electric power as an essential component of green energy). In fact, I’m hoping to hold onto my eleven-year-old Izusu Trooper until I can replace it with a car that uses mostly electricity.

Will that be the Volt? Time will tell.

Voice-to-Screen messaging – powered by SpinVox

(Photo: our 1996 Trooper)

Posted in Wall Street Journal, automobiles, green technology, innovation, public relations, sustainability, technology | Comments

Daimler pitches continued alliance after Chrysler sold

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007

As discussed a few weeks ago when DaimlerChrysler first revealed the option to sell Chrysler to another investor, untangling the connections between the Mercedes and Chrysler operating units poses a challenge for buyer and seller. Perhaps to reassure investors, and get a better price for their asset, Daimler yesterday announced (as reported in the Wall Street Journal) that it would be willing to continue many aspects of the cooperation between Mercedes and Chrysler.

Daimler’s offer of joint purchasing, component sharing, etc., after a divestment is more appealing to a private-equity buyer than another car company, which might have strategic and competitive reasons for limiting such sharing (as might Daimler).

Splitting operating siblings who are in the same business is the corporate equivalent of separating conjoined twins. After years of union, each has grown to rely on systems and processes provided by the other twin. When the units are separated, those systems must be recreated. Daimler’s offer to continue important partnerships allows the weaker twin (i.e., Chrysler) to continue to benefit from the stronger twin’s systems, as well as save expenses, even if they aren’t formally connected anymore.

(Photo still from the movie “Stuck On You”)

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Posted in Wall Street Journal, alliances, automobiles, strategy | Comments