The Future is electric?

One of the strongest themes of this year's Paris autoshow was the arrival of true 'production ready' electric vehicles. Renault for example, showed six new electric models representing the majority of the brand's product pipeline for the next twelve months. Lots of questions surround these vehicles (charging infrastructure, battery replacment etc.) but a fundamental barrier remains the simplest and starkest of all - price. In the UK, even with a £5000 subsidy in place, these vehicles look very pricey.
Take the Peugeot iOn for example - a trawl round the website does not reveal a purchase price but the 'offer' on the vehicle is: "a four year, 40,000 mile contract [for which] the monthly payment will be £415 excluding VAT". Will there be many takers for what is fundamentally a mini car when you can choose the "Just add petrol" contract on Peugeot's 'conventional' city car, the 107, for £181 a month? Car drivers will have to be fanatically convinced of the rightness of the electric option to pay this sort of differential.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"

Has anyone else noticed how the pan-European launch campaign for A1 'draws heavily' (i.e. unashamedly steals) the technique and motif that the UK TV channel C4 has used for a number of years in its continuity trailers?

Carmorphism

At a roundtable today about the LCV (Light Commercial Vehicle) market the subject of how to segment these vehicles was being discussed. The problem with existing segmentation is that it is very vague - a description such as "EU Medium Commercial" covers such a variety of shapes and sizes of panel vans that it is almost meaningless. The discussion turned to pick-up trucks, which again covers a range of vehicles from worthy (and somewhat boring) work-horses to the more recent 'designer' offerings with their plethora of crash bars, fog lamps and flame decals. A 'sub-segmentation' for the latter was offered: "Village People pick-ups".
From wikipedia:
"Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts. Examples include animals and plants and forces of nature such as winds, rain or the sun depicted as creatures with human motivation able to reason and converse. The term derives from the combination of the Greek ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos), "human" and μορφή (morphē), "shape" or "form"."

Glenn from Village People	A Mitsubishi L200

 

Amarok

Further to the comments on model names in an earlier post, Volkswagen's new pick-up truck is to be called Amarok: "... the Inuit for ‘Wolf’, Amarok embodies the animal’s legendary strength and endurance." Inuit! a whole untapped vein of possibilites to be ruthlessly mined by automotive product teams. Here are some other suggestions for next generation vehicle models gleaned from the Canadian Inuit-English Dictionary:

• Uyarak (Rock)
• Atanerk (Chief)
• Tuktu (Caribou)

or how about?

• Pussi (Cat)

Unfortunately, it turns out that Amarok does not quite supply the virgin brand territory Volkswagen may have hoped for. The word is already used as the brand name for a piece of media player software and the twitter site is consequently inhabited by the same people. The main domain belongs to a 'Drywall Distributor Network', whilst the German domain to the manufacturers of dog leads (nice configurator application though!).
In this day and age developing a brand name without cordoning off all these corresponding 'digital spaces' in advance can only be viewed as a major, and potentially costly, oversight.

Car of the Year 2010 is the VW Polo

Well there you go... In complete defiance of previous form (see below) a German winner of the Car of the Year. Volkswagen last won in 1992. A choice indicative of the times perhaps - safe and reliable, but nothing really ground breaking about this car? IQ would have been a more daring choice, acknowledging a product that is at least trying to respond to, if falling short of defining, the current zeitgeist.

Car of the Year - 2010 results
1st VW Polo, 347 points
2nd Toyota iQ, 337 points
3rd Vauxhall Astra, 221 points
4th Skoda Yeti, 158 points
5th Mercedes E-class, 155 points
6th Peugeot 3008, 144 points
7th Citroen C3 Picasso, 113 points

Car of the Year - Previous winners
2009 General Motors Insignia
2008 Fiat 500
2007 Ford Galaxy
2006 Renault Clio
2005 Toyota Prius
2004 Fiat Panda
2003 Renault Megane
2002 PSA 307
2001 Alfa 147
2000 Toyota Yaris
1999 Ford Focus
1998 Alfa 156
1997 Renault Megane Scenic
1996 Fiat Bravo/Brava
1995 Fiat Punto
1994 Ford Mondeo
1993 Nissan Micra
1992 Volkswagen Golf
1991 Renault Clio
1990 PSA XM

European scrappage schemes : what happened to the 'Single Market'?

Faced with a meltdown in vehicle sales, European governments have responded over the year - to varying effect - with the introduction of national scrappage incentives to coax buyers into the car market-place. Even eighteen months ago any government suggesting that it was going to prop up its local industry with subsidies to the individual consumer of 2,000 euros or more would have faced the full wrath of the European Commission, and been threatened with fines and other sanctions. However, in this rush for the lifeboats all talk of the Single European Market, 'level playing fields' etc. has been quietly abandoned.

Fears in some quarters of a European 'super state' transcending the place of national governments seem highly premature at the present time. Yet this is one case where it would have been appropriate, and fair, for the EU to lead implementation of a consistent pan-European vehicle incentive?

A summary of the main schemes shows considerable variation in the scope and size of the national scrappage incentives:

Germany: 'Umweltprämie' - (February) pays motorists 2,500 euros towards a new model if they scrap a vehicle nine years old or more. scheme was extended in March until the end of 2009.
Italy: 'Eco-incentivi' – (March) between 1,500 and 5,000 euros towards a new, low emissions model when a car over 10 years old is surrendered.
UK: 'Vehicle discount' (May) - new vehicle buyers could receive a GBP 2,000 incentive when trading in a vehicle ten or more years old.
Spain: 'Plan 2000E' – (May) 2000 euro subsidy for new car buyers trading in 10 year old car (tied to CO2 emissions of new car)
France: (January) 1,000-5,000 euros towards a replacement car for one over 10 years old (amount linked to CO2 emissions of new car).

Ford Mustang is the second most searched for automotive model name in Germany

Whilst putting together the latest issue of sophus3News for the German market I was once again puzzled by some of the data made available by our colleagues at google automotive. Each month they supply an indexed report on the top 20 most searched for automotive brand names, and the top ten models requested by users of google. Within the German model league table 'Ford Mustang' is almost always in the top three. Why is this? In October, searches for 'Ford Mustang' were up 20% on the previous month. If you conduct a search on google.de for German language pages about 'Ford Mustang' it finds more than 380,000 pages containing an exact match. Yet in October there were just 22 imported Ford Mustangs registered as sold in Germany, bringing the year-to-date total to 276 units! 'Mustang' must be one of the most valuable and at the same time most under-used brand assets that Ford Germany has at its disposal?

Campaign for Punto Evolution: aspirant 'iCar'?

A new campaign launched into German market over the last month is Fiat's introduction of the latest iteration of its Punto model, the Evolution. A developing theme of marketing in this segment is the car's 'connectedness'. Marketeers are clearly wanting to tap into a generation's infatuation with gadgets, and the success of products such as the iPhone and Wii, hoping to surround automobiles with a similar 'must-have' aura. The theme is even more strongly developed in the model microsite: http://www.complete-your-download.de/.




Postscript 27/11/2009: In Italy, Fiat are now selling three generations of the Punto model side-by-side: the 'Classic', 'Grande Punto', and 'Punto Evolution'. An interesting problem of differentiation?

Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) or probably not

Not wanting to turn this into an environmental blog, but...
The BBC's 'ethical man' ("I spent a year trying to cut our carbon emissions and reporting on the exercise for Newsnight") takes a look at the CO2 emissions of different transport modes and claims that cars may perform better than is often argued, "If I pack my family of five into a car, the average emissions per passenger falls to just 45g/km ... Virgin's most modern diesel train, the Voyager, emits 74g per passenger kilometre when travelling half-full..."
The sleight of hand here is that occupancy rates of cars average 1.58 whilst clearly 'ethical man' has never fought hand-to-hand for a seat on a Virgin train.

JOY is a three letter word

When I first came across this reaction to BMW's most recent brand campaign ("Joy is BMW") it did seem an artificially seeded storm in a teacup - an oversensitive reaction to some pretty innocuous advertising copy. 'Googling' the web it was hard to find any other voices raised in outrage at BMW's supposedly crass, or more malevolently intended, reference to the Nazi era through the use of the word Joy (as in "Strength through Joy"). My first reaction was that BMW's crime - if anything - was a lack of originality. 'Joy' as a word and concept was pretty much exhausted in a car advertising context by Honda's use of it in the late '90s when it launched the H-RV as the 'Joy machine'.
However this advert / 'viral' doing the rounds might lead to some second thoughts - the portrayal of BMW drivers does seem that bit closer to the Aryan athletes of a Leni Riefenstahl film?