The Euro NCAP is like a contagious disease. Now, for a maximum star score, the safety systems must always be on. Everyone obeys obediently. In the latest models that I tested in recent months, I had to disable the whole bunch of panic sowers at every start, from the speed indicator to the lane change warning.
Depending on the brand, you must quickly complete four stages in the multimedia menu. Every action is one too many. Nio alleviates the suffering with a smart shortcut in the home menu, with which the worst suffering can be suppressed with one click. It is only a cover-up for the bleeding, because that action also has to be repeated again and again, which is very irritating. And that damn camera on the steering column keeps spying on you. It immediately sounds the alarm if you take your eyes off the road for a moment to turn on the air conditioning. This terror also reached epidemic proportions last year.
Cancellation is not possible. Safety is sacred. The car industry never seems to dare to ask: guys, isn’t this going a bit too far? No, people bow. The reward for good behavior is a good grade, five stars in the crash test. And voilà, another expense item, another more expensive car.
Another headache for accounting is emissions legislation. This week, a number of countries and car manufacturers appeared to be uncomfortable with the Euro 7 standard. This would make cars with combustion engines even more expensive. Great, you might think, then people will automatically buy a plug-in car. Just kidding. Everyone knows how high the financial barrier for EVs has remained. Judging by the state of the subsidy pot for private buyers, the Netherlands has not exactly become more interested in electric after the price war by Tesla and associates.
Understandable, no matter how good the charging station infrastructure is here. Although the evolution of battery technology does not stand still, consumers notice too little of it. The range, even that of larger EVs, too often remains around 400 in normal use. You don’t necessarily solve that problem by spending more. A BMW iX xDrive40 doesn’t get much further than my i3. Furthermore, due to the sharply increased electricity rates and the tax authorities, the price advantage of electric is in danger of evaporating. In two years’ time, those heavy bastards will be taxed by weight via the MRB. This means that all signals for the energy transition are glowing red. So consumers choose a Tesla that does deliver in terms of driving range or a plugin. Otherwise they will remain loyal to their old cars, which will push the energy transition back a bit further in time. The ultimate cause? Pricing. Health insurers, brokers, car manufacturers, tax authorities; everything demands a premium.
So cost control must be a priority, especially for the environment. If you want people to drive cleanly, you have to make electric affordable. To achieve this, governments must continue to lower tax thresholds, energy suppliers must be strictly monitored, and manufacturers must learn to strip cars.
Walter Isaacson’s Musk biography shows how Musk puts pressure on employees to achieve cost optimization. His bullshit detector sometimes runs away with him, he has his manic and unpredictable sides, but in general a healthy distrust rarely deceives him. People with a revenue model have the ineradicable urge to ask too much. Does a supplier want two tons for a rocket engine? Let’s see, says Musk, whether we at SpaceX can build one ourselves for $5,000. What if we pressed the underbody of cars from one piece if that would save hundreds of parts? At SpaceX and Tesla, everything revolves around the question of how you can design and produce products more simply and therefore cheaper.
Sometimes the goals prove unattainable. Then Musk wildly fires competent people, or he resigns as if nothing had happened. But he often manages to achieve drastic cost reductions in an intelligent way, always using the question: Why do we do this this way?
We don’t mention that enough here. That’s why I grind my teeth to disable functions in every new car. That’s why all those good five-star cars are so heavy. We stay neatly within the lines of the regulations, and so does Tesla when it comes to assistance aids. We are going down the dead end of convention.
The entrenched European car industry, whose survival is threatened by America and Asia, should urgently take Musk’s mantra ‘delete, delete, delete’ to heart. Delete the excess cars in your ranges. Delete the bondage to Euro NCAP. Make cars lighter, simpler, more efficient. Scrap things out. Denounce the hysterically escalated safety requirements with intelligent arguments. My statement: They mainly serve a symbolic purpose. These assistance systems are not about safety, they are there to show how the companies are putting their best foot forward. I understand the sensitivity of the theme, no one wants to have road traffic victims on their conscience. Yet the star system needs to be overhauled, because it becomes an insatiable monster if no one draws the line and it is one of the factors that drives prices to absurd heights.
True, things squeak in Teslas too. But Musk’s cars, and that is the essential and fatal difference for the fossil industry, start with a clean slate that everyone should now want to learn from. Manufacturers, focus on the main task; make cars cleaner. Delete, delete, delete. Simplification also serves an ecological purpose. The simpler a car is, the fewer parts you use and the less time and energy it takes to build it. Continuing on the path we have chosen is suicide, even for previously untouchable concerns such as Volkswagen.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl