Translated (02/25) by the author.
Originally published in German: Fabian Kröger. Rennreiselimousine oder Telemobil? Eine Geschichte automobiler Zukunftsvisionen: Von den Trends der Herstellung bis zum Ende der Lust am Fahren im unfallfreien Verkehr mit Auto-Mobilen”: in: Telepolis, March 8, 2005.
The contradictory “futures of the automobile” were the subject of a recent conference at the Mannheim State Museum of Technology and Labor. On the one hand, it dealt with the current restructuring in automobile production, secondly with the chance of an alternative use of the automobile and finally with the future of automotive utopias. The conference took place on the occasion of the Lust am Auto exhibition at the Mannheim State Museum, which has been extended until May 1, 2005 and deals lovingly and in detail with the emotions surrounding the automobile.
Fordist automobile production – continuity or rupture?
Right at the beginning, the big topic of “Fordist automobilization” had been used to open the conference. The question discussed was whether Fordism was still a forward-looking model for the globalized automotive industry or whether it was coming to an end.
Industrial sociologist Gert Schmidt lamented the post- and neo-fashions in sociological theory formation. He preferred to speak of Varieties of Fordism rather than Post-Fordism. In his view, the new qualities of today’s production structures should be analyzed as changes to existing Fordist principles. After all, the factories are still Fordist in logic and structure. Schmidt also emphasized that Fordism was not only a form of production, but also a cultural way of life. Using aerial photographs of highway intersections and housing estates from various decades, he attempted to demonstrate the continuity and stability of the Fordist way of life to this day. From Dadaism to Warhol’s “Cars”, all cultural movements cited the assembly line.
Crisis of Taylorist Fordism – Toyotism as a new model
It is certainly obvious that a specific division of labor and assembly line production have remained central elements of automobile production throughout. On the other hand, however, certain characteristics can also be used to describe very precisely how modern car factories differ from earlier Fordist production concepts. A brief look at history shows this:
The Japanese car company Toyota first established lean production in the mid-1970s. Although this form of production continues certain elements of Fordism (assembly line, cycle time, standardization, work schedules), it also differs significantly from the old industrial model. Firstly, production is just-in-time, meaning that the right components are in the right place at the right time – storage costs are eliminated. Secondly, teamwork is introduced, which leads to mutual control and self-monitoring among employees and at the same time enables participation. Thirdly, continuous improvement of operations through employee suggestions is introduced (Kaizen principle) and fourthly, automation is expanded.
This Japanese production system, known as Toyotism, established itself as a new model following the crisis of Fordism in the 1970s, as it allowed much faster development cycles. Regulation theory refers to this ongoing transformation phase as post-Fordism.
Return of Taylorism? The crisis in the automotive industry
Gone are the days when a job in the automotive industry was as secure as a civil service appointment. Today, the 770,000 employees in the German automotive industry are mainly white-collar workers and academics, while workers with basic skills are increasingly being outsourced.
However, Ulrich Jürgens from the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) pointed out that this means that the car industry has the problem of having to cope with lower labour productivity and higher coordination costs. Work and production organization had been neglected in favour of industrial organization. Many automotive companies are now questioning whether they can effectively solve their productivity problems in the “post-Fordist” way.
Since the mid-1990s, there has been a massive renaissance of Taylorism, explained the sociologist Christian Sandig from Erlangen.
In the famous model of “scientific management”, the worker is, as is well known, reduced to a single hand movement and thinking is not encouraged. Executing and ordering activities are strictly separated. This form of production achieved iconological status in Chaplin’s film Modern Times. In fact, many companies are now practising a re-standardization of assembly work in particular. The DaimlerChrysler Group’s Rastatt assembly plant is symbolic of the trend towards revitalizing Taylorist structures. The separation of assembly line and assembly boxes has been reversed there.
However, since toyotistic elements such as group work and direct participation opportunities have been retained, a simple theory of re-taylorization seems inappropriate.
According to Ulrich Jürgens, these restructuring problems are compounded by the fact that many companies – such as Fiat – are now in a bad situation because they have primarily trusted consulting agencies and pursued shareholder value.
The term shareholder value refers to the value of the company for the shareholders. A corporate policy based on shareholder value pursues the goal of achieving an increase in the share price and thus maximizing the value of the company in the long term.
The increasing influence of consultants’ studies is dangerous, as they are based on unverifiable data and symbolize a de-scientification of management consulting, criticized Jürgens.
Globalization of the Fordist model?
More controversial than the academic debate about whether current production relations can be seen as a late-Toyotist version of Fordism or a neo-Taylorist variant of post-Fordism is certainly the question of how Fordism is asserting itself as a form of production and way of life in other countries under the conditions of neoliberal globalization. What does the Chinese version of the US-European Fordism model look like?
In a low-cost country like China, at most ten percent of the population achieve a level of consumption comparable to Western Europe. In addition, there is largely no welfare state protection. This is why this development can best be described as “dirty Fordism” in the words of Alain Lipietz. However, Professor Willi Dietz from the Institute of Automotive Economics (IFA) at Nürtingen University of Applied Sciences pointed out that in the long term, Western consumption patterns are likely to be transferred to China. According to the IFA, there are currently 650 million cars in the world, and in five years there will be 720 million. Even though Weert Canzler from the Berlin Science Center made it clear that the Western mobility model is “not transferable worldwide”, it is becoming apparent that the only barriers to Fordism at present are climate change and dwindling energy resources.
No chance of reinterpreting the car as a collective good
Meanwhile, in the western metropolitan areas, the focus is on the prospects of a different kind of automobilism and the question of new forms of car use. The view that the car is not primarily a means of transportation, but primarily fulfils secondary functions, has also become established in social science mobility research.
“The chances of it being reinterpreted as a collective commodity are slim. The car is a self-propelling mobility machine that creates its own purposes.” Weert Canzler
From 1999 to 2003, the WZB accompanied a large field experiment centered on the CashCar model: when the user returns the leased vehicle, it is used in a car-sharing operation and the revenue generated is credited to the leasing customer:
“The vehicle thus becomes more attractive for customers the more often they do not use it themselves but return it.”
The hope was that there would be a “change in the meaning attributed to the car from a private car to a shared asset”. However, the Cashcar principle did not work, as users had a lot of planning to do, said Canzler: first they had to plan if and when they did not need their car, then they had to hand it in, choose another vehicle later and then pick it up again. The principle of “using without thinking” had won out over the principle of “using without owning”. An “emotional version of car sharing” – with sports cars to be selected, for example – would therefore not work either. Canzler therefore concluded that a reinterpretation of the private car is virtually impossible in modern societies.
In fact, the registration figures clearly show that one must speak of a “triumph of the racing sedan”: Whereas in 1990 around one in seven cars was still able to cover 180 to 200 kilometers per hour, by 2003 one in four cars was able to do so. Among newly registered cars, 60 percent can already travel faster than 180 km/h.
In addition to this appeal of speeding, the principle of “owning instead of using”, which is dominant in Japan, is also becoming a trend in Europe. So instead of becoming a collective good, the car is moving closer and closer to its extreme form, the very expensive and rarely used sports boat. Perhaps in the future the car will share the fate of the horse, which is now relegated to the trotting tracks as a luxury good?
The history of automotive visions of the future
Cultures are constituted on the one hand by practices of memory, and on the other by practices of planning, forecasting and foresight. The term “future” never only refers to the time yet to come.
In the Middle Ages, the term future also had a religious dimension. The Middle High German word zuokunft meant “the coming”, “the arrival”, but also “the descent of God”. When we talk about the “future of the automobile”, the expectation of an epiphany, an appearance of God on earth, also resonates here. Automobile visions of the future have always been linked to the desire for self-divinization, for omnimobility. Air-cushion vehicles and flying cars testify to the numinous store of meaning of these fantasies.
In the 1950s, automotive utopias exploded in Europe, putting the car in competition with the airplane, emphasized organizer Kurt Möser from the State Museum of Technology and Labour. This can be seen in the design: with the design language of the jet age, many cars hid their wheel arches to visually simulate gliding. The flight fantasies went so far that companies such as Borgward planned the construction of a three-seater popular helicopter called the “Kolibri”. At the beginning of the 1970s, however, the ecological debate and the oil crisis led to a break with this first phase of automotive visions of the future. The utopian designs now focused on accident safety and new interior concepts.
However, Kurt Möser and Gijs Mom from Eindhoven University of Technology emphasized that the function of many future utopias does not lie in their concrete implementation. It is not about whether the fantasies become reality or not. Rather, they should explore the technical and aesthetic potential. For example, the disappointment with the electric car only related to the overall artifact: However, details designed for the electric car, such as a smooth-running engine or radial tires, had been adopted in normal production.
Conversely, many futuristic innovations were initially invented for other purposes. For example, the hydropneumatic suspension of the legendary Citroen DS from 1955 was originally developed by the military for cannons, explained Möser. There was also a transfer from military to civilian use in the Amphicar floating car.
DaimlerChrysler’s technological positivism
Bernd Pletschen, Head of Vehicle Concepts at DaimlerChrysler, presented a contemporary utopia. Under the somewhat laborious title “Innovation and Fascination”, he presented the numerous electronic assistance systems that should save drivers from any critical situation in the future. The aim is to achieve accident-free traffic with massive use of electronics. Furthermore, an inflation of new comfort functions must be expected.
In order to be able to drive a convertible in winter, the Airscarf was developed, which blows hot air into the neck. DaimlerChrysler has also discovered in studies that artificial leather feels better than real leather. However, as customers want high-quality materials in their vehicles, research is now being carried out into how real leather can be modified so that it feels as good as artificial leather. Since the artificial is now more natural than nature itself, nature has to be made even more natural artificially.
DaimlerChrysler has also discovered in studies that artificial leather feels better than real leather. However, as customers want high-quality materials in their vehicles, research is now being carried out into how real leather can be modified so that it feels as good as artificial leather. Since the artificial is now more natural than nature itself, nature has to be made even more natural artificially.
Furthermore, the de-tactilization of the user interfaces is progressing: when your fingers come close to a “capacitive proximity switch”, a display automatically pops up, which is also completely individually configurable. So you can decide whether you want the speedometer in the middle or to the side. Everything is aimed at being able to move a car using only your thoughts. Until then, Mercedes is contributing force-sensitive gas pedals to the car of the future, which no longer move mechanically, but whose sensors measure the pressure of the foot. This demonstrates the trend towards transforming every possible hardware surface into digitally programmable software. Henry Ford’s motto: “The buyer can have any color as long as it is black” is being radicalized in reverse: In the future, buyers will not only have to choose the paint and seat color of their car, but also program it themselves.
From automobile to telemobile
The fundamental conflict that the promise of the “automobile” is heading towards in the future in view of electronic assistance systems was only tentatively addressed at the Mannheim conference: today, the trend is towards an automatization of driving and traffic participation.
As early as 1938, when the first highway was opened in the Netherlands, railroad concepts were the inspiration, said Gijs Mom from TU Eindhoven. The highway offered better controllability in order to tame what was perceived as anarchic traffic. This trend is coming to a head today, as the railroad fantasies are now coming to fruition: with the installation of electronic distance warning systems and lane departure warning systems, regulated speed limits and automatic emergency braking, the promise of the self-controlled automobile is being abandoned and replaced by the remote-controlled telemobile.
The mythology of the automobile collides with the utopia of accident-free traffic. With the slogan “The pleasure of safe driving”, DaimlerChrysler has already intuitively grasped the problem of its safety utopia: What makes a car fun is the risk. A completely accident-resistant vehicle is therefore completely boring. The lack of social control in self-driving cars is what makes them so appealing. That’s why developers are still making sure that sensitive technologies – such as ESP, which prevents the vehicle from skidding – can be switched off if necessary.
However, the question arises as to how long the more or less useful electronic features will still be controllable by the driver. However, some technologies can also be switched on against the grain: For example, some commuters who drive the same route every day use the navigation system for entertainment. A total rejection of telematics upgrades remains practiced in a playful manner by the classic car scene.
