I had the pleasure of attending Media Day at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit a couple of weeks ago. This has been a highlight of the calendar ever since I started working in the automotive industry almost 20 years ago.
Except this year it wasn’t. It was a disappointment.
It was remarkable to see how far it’s come from the glory days when it was (or at least I understood it to be) the most important auto show of the year, with media coming from all over the globe in huge numbers.
I think it ran into a reality that has been building for the past few years. Simply put, the Detroit auto show is not as important a showcase of automotive information as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which took place a week earlier in Las Vegas.
This is a big transition, and it’s not really about car shows. It’s about the growth in importance of autonomous driving developments, connected cars and mobility services. The car has already evolved from being a mechanical device to being a rolling computer. It is now entering the next stage of its evolution — becoming a networked computer.
The first home computer I bought (a 286 with a whopping 1MB of RAM for those sentimentalists out there) was a very useful tool, but it was a stand-alone device. There was no Internet to connect it to. As soon as my computer became a networked device, it’s utility and engagement grew exponentially. We are poised on the edge of seeing the same transition happen with vehicles.
They are becoming networked devices. And the experience they offer users will be shaped as much by the networked aspects of ownership as they will be by the shape of the sheet metal and the performance of the powertrain.
This is a big transition, and it’s not really about car shows. It’s about the growth in importance of autonomous driving developments, connected cars and mobility services.
That is what seemed so absent in Detroit. Arguably the two biggest product announcements of the day were decidedly old school. A new 750 horsepower Shelby Mustang and the relaunch of the Toyota Supra. Both pretty exciting cars that will be sold to very small niches of customers.
I think we are at a point in the history of the automotive industry where all players need to recognize that just as it would be almost impossible to sell a computer that didn’t connect to networks, so in a few years it will be almost impossible to sell a car that doesn’t. And everyone’s business is being reshaped by that.
In a previous column I mentioned the car Volvo is launching in 2019 that will measure more than 800 data points every minute. To me, that is forward looking. That kind of announcement is what I expected to see more of in Detroit. Going to a show as important as NAIAS and not seeing vehicle connectivity as a central theme surprised me. Next year I’ll be sure to get to CES.
