IN 1889, Charles Duell, the commissioner of the US Patent Office, rather prematurely declared that everything that will be invented has been invented.
Maybe he was having a particularly trying week and wanted to retire.
However, what he said has some ring of truth to it, especially if you are an inventor and have to run through the patent listing to find out if some guy in a black coat in the 19th century had actually filed a patent for a mobile, electric-powered living room.
At almost every motor show in the last five years, and every year for the last 10 years at the Tokyo Motor Show, they always have a future mobility concept that looks like a living room on wheels.
Apparently, we like cars, but cannot
stand traffic.
However, since everyone wants cars and the result of everyone wanting cars is endless traffic queues, we have now decided to come up with a little widget that would drive the cars for us.
Audi offered the A8 with eyes off capabilities and the next generation Mercedes-Benz S-Class will come with eyes off option as well. What that means is that you, as the driver, can take your eyes off the road and let the car take care of business but you cannot sleep at the wheel.
If you want to sleep at the wheel, you have to wait for the next generation of cars which have mind off capabilities, which means they no longer need human supervision to get from destination to destination.
By removing the actual chore of driving from occupants, lots of things can be taken out of the cabin, such as the steering wheel and all the pedals and lever that are associated with driving, notto mention the instrument cluster and the need for the front passenger to ask if we are on the right road and if we actually know what we are doing.
With all that removed, we are left with a space that can be more creatively used and it seems we all want to be in our living room.
I think the evolution of cars will be in terms of its gender and I am not just saying that to annoy the non-binary folks out there because I think that is how the cabin will evolve.
We will either choose the homely and maybe frilly cabin for the family, a dark leathery cocoon for the men’s club and for the other times when we are alone or with our old buddies, we want a man cave on wheels.
In 1909, the Baker Electric Car Company produced what looked like a large telephone booth on wheels. It looked about ready to topple around any corner and one wouldn’t think that it would be a popular choice as a runabout.
According to comedian and classic car addict Jay Leno, and I am not about to question his facts, there were 15,000 of these cars at the beginning of the 1900s in New York.
They were marketed as ladies shopping car and instead of a conventional layout, the cabin consists of two bench seats opposing each other front to rear.
Four ladies and their elaborate hats could sit comfortably in the car because it had a nice square section and very tall roof.
Petrol cars of the time required hand cranking while steam powered cars, which were the faster option those days were basically high-pressure boilers waiting to explode so women tended to be wary of them.
The electric option, was a far more suitable mode of power for them, all they had to do was turn on the key and press the pedal for go and one for brake, and turn the tiller in the right direction. Much easier to keep gloves clean this way.
The cabin actually looked like a living room from the era, right down to the window raisers with its elaborate patterns and such other girly things.
It actually came with a vase.
The girly cabin meant that they mostly end up in the care of women and since they needed nothing more than charging every day and checking the battery every two or three years, they were quite perfect for the job.
If it had come with chesterfield style cushion with brass studs holding down the trim and came with a drinks dispenser, it would have been more suited to men. Especially since you could order the Baker electric as a Landau carriage with the driver outside in front.
By any measure, the Baker Electric was a superior product, offering convenience, cleanliness, ease of maintenance and decent range of 160km, but it had one fatal error, they did not focus on the unimportant.
Men like the unimportant, we like to be sidetracked.
Look at how Tesla never forgets to quietly tell reviewers just how fast their car can go and how much load it can tow so that all the test drive videos feature things that men like when all the effort that went into the car was about boring stuff that women like, such as clean fingernails, nice interior and no smelly and loud exhaust.
The new Volkswagen ID.3 is a nice enough car but they need to either start making it go really fast or offer steampunk interior. Otherwise that car and its vegan interior is not going to stick around for too long.
Tesla can continue to offer a girly interior because it has warp drive and enough high-tech gadgetry to bore the 99.9th percentile women to death and that alone makes it a lad’s car. Plus a Tesla still has a relatively long masculine bonnet.
They say it is important that we learn from history so that we don’t repeat it, and today, I have done my part in making sure that electric cars will not die another untimely death just because no one told the manufacturers to offer man-cave interiors.
Style is more important than substance, always and that’s not just me saying it.
I leave you with this wonderful observation of one of the greatest minds in literature, Oscar Wilde; “In matters of
grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing”.