Tag: cars

• Apple’s next best thing is on the road

  I hate driving (specifically in the city), but I am fascinated by the next generation of Apple’s CarPlay, which I recently wrote about, here.

  One of the reasons why I’m fascinated is because so much of our built environment is built around the car. And since the built environment tends to be very sticky, I think one can safely assume that — for better or for worse, it’s actually worse — we’re going to need a lot of cars for the foreseeable future.

  According to Apple, 98% of new cars in the US come with CarPlay already installed. So, all cars. And the obvious reason for this is that many or most people want it. According to this survey, about 1/3 of new car buyers say that they wouldn’t buy a new car if it didn’t have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.

  Apple believes this number is much higher at 79% of US buyers. I don’t know what the right number is, but I do believe the number is substantial and probably closer to Apple’s than the 1/3 figure. I certainly wouldn’t buy a new car without CarPlay.

  The result is a suboptimal situation for carmakers. Apple is still going to do whatever it takes to make carmakers want to use CarPlay. My recent post was largely about the design efforts that they have undertaken. But in the end, I’m not sure the auto industry has much of a choice.

  There’s likely no way they’re going to be able to compete with Apple (and Alphabet) from a software perspective and, in the end, consumers are going to want whatever pairs perfectly with their existing phone, since that’s where their entire life already lives.

  No wonder Apple killed their car project. They can just use everyone else’s cars. Even if this is a departure from their typical approach of controlling both the hardware and software.

  2024.06.28

• US mandates new higher-speed automatic braking for passenger vehicles

  The US Department of Transportation has just finalized a new vehicle safety standard that will require all light-duty vehicles to be equipped with a more advanced form of automatic emergency braking (AEB) by 2029. (Light-duty vehicle = pretty much all passenger vehicles, including SUVs and trucks.)

  Now, most light-duty vehicles on the road today already have some form of emergency braking. What’s noteworthy about this ruling is that it requires a more robust version. Some might say one that works. Specifically, it will need to work at much higher speeds and at night.

  Most of the AEB systems in operation today don’t really work at night — basically at all — and many have shown to be ineffective when it comes to stopping for humans.

  This new standard will require vehicles to automatically brake at up to 90 mph when a possible collision with a car is detected and up to 45 mph when a possible collision with a pedestrian is detected.

  This seems like a very good thing, especially given the persistent problem we are having with cars killing too many people. But how do we do it?

  From what I have read, this new standard will be pretty challenging to meet without the use of long-range LiDAR, especially since night vision is a requirement. I find this interesting because, even though autonomy is taking a lot longer to arrive than most people anticipated, there’s still meaningful progress being made.

  Here’s to hoping it saves a lot of lives.

  2024.05.07

• Why cars keep getting bigger

  

  Last week we spoke about parking space dimensions. And my point was that these dimensions can dramatically change parking designs in new developments. In the comment section of this post, you’ll now find a number of examples of how these dimensions vary by city.

  But the reality is that cars do keep getting bigger — at least in this part of the world. In the 1970s, SUVs and trucks made up less than a quarter of new car sales in the US. Today, this number is greater than 80%. It has become the standard kind of car.

  So this week, let’s touch on why this has happened.

  One argument might be that this was just what consumers inherently wanted. But there’s lots of evidence to suggest that this wasn’t really the case; it was instead encouraged by government policy.

  One specific example is the creation of Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (also known as CAFE). This was first introduced in the 1970s, but importantly, it was done with two different fuel economy standards: one for cars and one for light trucks.

  Since the light truck standard was less onerous (see above chart), this created a strong incentive for car makers to just make and sell more light trucks. And curiously enough, that’s exactly what they did.

  For much more on this topic, check out this comprehensive Vox article by David Zipper.

  2024.04.29

• The century of gasoline vehicles is coming to an end

  Chrysler announced last week that it will become an all-electric vehicle company by 2028. This is a pretty big deal and, as I understand it, a first for the legacy US automakers. At this point, it now feels difficult to argue that this shift isn’t going to happen. Though I remember lots of people in the past asserting that the masses would never ever switch over to electric.

  I guess that’s the status quo bias at work. Because if you flip the script and assume that the status quo is already electric (that is, we all come home after work, plug in our cars, and charge them up at low rates), it would be pretty hard to argue for a switch to gasoline-powered cars. Here, try this new thing. It’ll cost you more to fill up and you get to pollute the environment more. But hey, it sounds cool when you do a cold start.

  Do we have Tesla to thank for exposing this?

  

  Here’s some further evidence from the Exponential View.

  In the UK last month (December 2021), 41% of new car registrations were electric or some kind of plug-in electric hybrid. That is up from 29% for the same period in 2020 (see above). Pure EVs also make up about 2/3 of these registrations and look to be picking up momentum. That’s certainly what I would expect to see when we revisit these numbers next year. The century of gasoline vehicles is coming to an end and it’s going to happen well inside of this decade.

  When I was buying a new car back in 2018, I wanted to buy an electric vehicle. I don’t have a charging station in my parking garage, but I would have gotten one. The problem is that I couldn’t find the kind of car that I wanted in an electric version. And the ones that were available were pretty expensive. That has changed and is no longer the case. If I were buying today, it would certainly be an EV. The car would also have to change colors at the push of a button.

  But, of course, the other element of change here is autonomy. And if/when that arrives, it will be far more disruptive than this shift to electric.

  2022.01.09

• Semi-automatic parking system

  I can think of at least a dozen buildings in Toronto that use some form of a parking stacker system. And I am seeing firsthand how they are becoming more popular and more commonplace as a result of space constraints, rising costs, and a bunch of other factors. Below is an example of a system that allows you to (almost) triple the number of cars that can be accommodated on a given footprint. However, it does require higher floor-to-ceiling heights and a pit. If you can’t see the video below, click here.

  2019.11.01

• Development is a local business

  

  This past weekend I toured my friend’s purpose-built rental project in Wynwood, called Midtown 29. It was completed last year and has already been stabilized.

  Real estate development is very much a local business. It is that way because so much of it is driven by relationships, but also because every market has its own little idiosyncrasies.

  This is always valuable to see. Sometimes we do things in our home market because it makes perfect sense to do so and sometimes we do it just because it’s, “the way we’ve always done it.”

  One of the most obvious things about development in South Florida is that the parking is always above-grade. No basements. That has the result of bringing down construction costs; though I understand that, with sea level rise, insurance costs are on the rise.

  If (or when) this whole autonomous vehicle thing does in fact take hold, it’s going to be a hell of lot easier to convert all of that excess parking in Miami than it will be in Toronto.

  Image: Midtown 29 (Art by Peter Gronquist)

  2019.05.21

• Young people are driving a lot less

  As a kid growing up in the suburbs, I got my driver’s license the day I turned 16. Being able to drive was a big deal. But we know that this desire to drive has been changing in profound ways. Here’s some recent stats on the percentage of licensed drivers in the US by age (taken from the WSJ):

  

  In 1983, about 46% of 16-year-olds had a driver’s license. By 2014, this number had dropped to 24.5%, which is the lowest it has been in recent years, and was probably impacted by the broader economy. As of 2017, this number was up to about 26%.

  If you’re a car company, I would imagine that these are pretty important numbers. They represent the top of the sales funnel. Most people probably like to have a driver’s license in hand before they go out and buy a car.

  Supposedly, some people in Detroit are betting that young people will still eventually buy a car. And when they do, it’ll be a nice big one like an SUV or a truck. But, the data suggests that it is not just young people who are eschewing driving.

  Here’s some data from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (via NPR), looking at the proportion of licensed drivers in the US by all age categories:

  

  While the biggest drop has certainly happened among younger generations, licensing is still down for older cohorts. Based on these numbers, we don’t hit parity until somewhere around 50 to 54 years old.

  And the only cohorts where licensing has increased significantly are when people reach over 55. Over 70 is up by a huge margin — more than the drop among 16 year olds — which is probably a symptom of people living longer.

  Some of this decrease among young people can probably be attributed to delayed family formation and people living in denser urban environments, where it is more convenient to get around without a car. But I don’t think that’s all of it.

  Which suggests to me that the race to autonomy is a pretty important one to win.

  2019.04.21

• The post-combustion era

  Over the winter I visited BMW World, and its neighboring museum, in Munich, Germany.

  I loved seeing how the company got its start and how far it has come since it helped to invent the automobile at the beginning of the 20th century. I think their first product was actually an airplane engine.

  But you and I both know that the paradigm is changing. The internal combustion engine (ICE) is going away and pretty soon we won’t be driving, so much as being driven around by our cars.

  Bloomberg recently published an interesting article about this shift and about BMW. Here is an excerpt:

  The fact that both combustion engines and electric motors find themselves inside the same 18,000-person complex in Dingolfing, BMW’s largest in Europe, makes it a microcosm of a shift overtaking automakers the world over. A visitor can see that 625-horsepower engine—more than twice as powerful as the original from 1985, a luxury product relentlessly branded as “the ultimate driving machine”—then walk around the corner and see its puny electric replacement. You start thinking the better slogan might be “the ultimate combustion engine.” As in: last of its kind.

  Electric motors are a hell of a lot simpler to manufacture (and service) than gasoline engines. BMW estimates that they take about 30% less time to make. So the impacts of this transformation span everything from supply chain to human capital.

  Today, about 10% of the work that goes on in Dingolfing is related to electric vehicles.

  2019.04.11

• A visit to BMW World

  

  Today we visited BMW Welt (World) and the BMW Museum in Munich.

  BMW Welt was designed by COOP HIMMELB(L)AU out of Vienna. It is the result of a design competition that the BMW Group held in 2001. Construction of the ~73,000 square meter facility was completed in 2007.

  The project is centered around a great hall and an elevated vehicle delivery area known as Premiere. It was designed — and this includes the HVAC system — to handle 40 car deliveries per hour, or 250 per day. I guess they don’t work a full 8 hours.

  Below are two photos that I took of the delivery area. The circles you see on the floor in the second picture are rotating platforms. This is where you want to pick up your new car.

  

  And here is a plan of the entire Welt space via COOP HIMMELB(L)AU:

  

  I also really enjoyed the BMW Museum, which is housed in a separate building adjacent to the BMW Tower (the one that looks like engine cylinders).

  The “art cars” were a lot of fun. I’m sure that many of you will be able to guess the artist behind this one:

  

  But what I enjoyed most were the classics like this one here:

  

  The least interesting cars for me were the ones that weren’t old enough to be “classic”, but also weren’t new and shiny. This can happen with architectural styles as well. Designs sometime need time to settle in.

  For more photos of BMW Welt and the BMW Museum, follow me on Instagram.

  Drawings/Isometrics: COOP HIMMELB(L)AU

  2019.02.22

• A decentralizing or centralizing force?

  I was on two panel discussions over the last week and, as is the case with all real estate panels, the topic of parking invariably came up, as did the impact of autonomous vehicles.

  There seems to be a general consensus that the advent of driverless cars will result in less demand for parking. Every developer I know is trying to build as little parking as possible and is thinking about how – when the time comes – they might convert their parking into something more productive. I have yet to speak to anyone who is building excess parking in order to prepare for autonomy.

  Where there’s a split, however, is whether autonomous vehicles will represent a decentralizing or a centralizing force for our cities. Historically, new technologies have lowered transportation costs and encouraged decentralization. Before the advent of rail, the US population hugged the coasts, because it was cheaper to navigate across the Atlantic than it was to move inland.

  A similar phenomenon also played out with our streetcar suburbs and with our car-oriented suburbs. These new technologies made it possible for people to travel further distances in order to get to work and other places. So it is not at all surprising that many people today are inferring that autonomous vehicles will produce this same outcome.

  But there is a counterargument. 

  We know that the demand for transportation services is highly elastic. Uber and other ride sharing apps have demonstrated this to us. Lower fares translate into dramatic increases in demand. So the opposing argument is that as the cost per kilometer drops – autonomous electric vehicles are going to be much more cost effective to operate – we’re going to see boatloads of induced demand.

  This induced demand will then force us to look toward road pricing and other demand management tools in order to cope, which then begs the question: How much cheaper and more convenient will autonomous vehicles really be? 

  At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that autonomous vehicles should correct many of the inefficiencies currently caused by humans acting like humans. There is also the opportunity to operate these autonomous vehicles more like public transit than as personal vehicles. And that will have a profound impact on urban mobility.

  Still, it is not yet clear, at least for me, that autonomous vehicles will be the decentralizing force that many assume they will be.

  2018.11.21