NAIAS 2017: From 'bold' to boring to meaningless

By Christopher A. Sawyer
The Virtual Driver

(January 17, 2017) The auto industry is headed into the abyss and doesn’t recognize it. Lost in its own echo chamber, the domestic and foreign manufacturers descended on Detroit for the latest iteration of the North American In
ternational Auto Show (Can we please officially shorten this to NAIAS Detroit?) declaring the inexorable triumph of automation, electrification and a switch from being automakers to mobility providers.

The reality distortion field was turned up to 10, and breathlessly reported on by the assembled hacks as they cheered the oncoming onslaught of electric vehicles driven by artificially intelligent computers.

"These fawning hacks who normally worry about the number of frequent flier miles racked up as they traipse from city to city and country to country on the rolling dinner party that is the modern vehicle launch program, could not see the end of this gravy train embodied by these over-the-top concepts and ideas. Or did they willfully wish to ignore them as much as they ignore their own waning importance?”

It was the same willful ignorance as shown by Ford as it breezily introduced the 2018 F-150 — the most important single vehicle in the company lineup, and the one whose profitability makes it possible for the rest of the lineup to exist — and ushered it off the stage in order to make space to talk about mobility.

Mobility. The new buzzword. The brave new world that encompasses autonomous vehicles, ride sharing, and multi-modal transportation choices ranging from bicycles to inter-city rail travel. To hear CEO Mark Fields tell it, Ford will get a 20% return on its mobility investments; a return greater than Ford makes on its main business and infinitely larger than it earns on its fledgling forays into the mobility universe.

When these dreams prove to be unrealistic, Fields won’t be as lucky as the perennially underperforming Apple CEO Tim Cook. He and his leadership team took a significant cut in pay. Fields, who to my mind is combining the auto industry’s angst with Ford scion and company chairman Bill Ford Jr.’s utopian desire to exorcise all of the evils and ills — real and imagined — that are part and parcel of the auto industry, won’t be so lucky.

He will lose his job. And all the pronouncements of the social theorists, logistics experts and poets (just three participants in Ford’s mobility “conference” on the floor of Joe Louis Arena) won’t make any difference to his fate. But the echo chamber that engulfs this industry was visible at places other than Ford, and with topics other than mobility. The shift to off-site functions reached a new high prior to the opening of press days, often resulting in multiple invitations to events taking place at the same time.

Undoubtedly, this had a positive effect on the bottom line of many a Detroit eatery, museum or meeting place that played host to the event. Unfortunately, they failed by most any other measure. The sheer number of events and announcements, not to mention the early release of press materials on the cars and trucks about to be introduced, meant there was no “clear air” in which to operate. It also took the wind and any residual excitement out of the press conferences held on Monday.

This need to one-up the competition almost reached ridiculous extremes with one local automaker planning to shuffle the press corps off-site in order to introduce a significant refresh of a current model. This would have crippled the press conferences to follow in a power play with all subtlety of a pre-emptive nuclear strike, and pitted the Detroit Auto Dealers Association — the folks who put on the Detroit show — against a major OEM. Thankfully this nonsense was stopped before it could start, and the scorched earth war that would have followed was avoided — for now.

But this wasn’t the only boldness on display in Detroit. Everywhere you turned this adjective was being used to describe every type and model of vehicle. It got to the point where you thought you were in that Friends episode where Jon Lovitz keeps repeating the word “tartlet”. The 2018 Chevy Traverse? Bold and modern. GMC’s 2018 Terrain with its Nissan Murano/Lexus RX derivative “floating” roof? Bold and refined. Toyota’s handsome new Camry was similarly bold, as were many other vehicles introduced at Detroit. And, as happened for the character Lovitz played in that episode, the word soon lost all meaning.

And that, in a nutshell, is the point. Many in the hallowed halls of this industry have no idea of what they are there to do other than deliver profits to faceless shareholders, curry favor with a disinterested financial community who thinks the industry lacks relevance, and seek absolution from bureaucrats and pressure groups that will never be satisfied with how clean or safe or acceptable the industry makes its products.

These “industry leaders” no longer see the millions of men and women who depend on their vehicles, enjoy driving them, and appreciate the freedom they represent. They embark instead on a perpetual apology tour, promising to do better, creating an echo chamber where their pronouncements on electrification, autonomy, etc. hide the unrealistic hope that, this time, they will do enough to gain the love and respect of their critics, and forever remove the automobile from the list of deplorables.

It has happened many times before and will happen again, but it will never exonerate the automobile, the auto industry or those who love them. To be truly bold, the industry must come to grips with this fact, celebrate what it has created, and act accordingly.

The Virtual Driver