EP05 - Horace Dediu on micromobility, and what it means for car makers

04/12/23 • 98 min

In this very special episode, Joe and Drew revisit Drew's interview with the father of micromobility, Horace Dediu.
This isn't the first time this interview's gone to air. You may have heard it first time around on Drew's other podcast, The Next Billion Seconds, or on Horace's own Micromobility podcast.
It is, however, the first time we've sat down to discuss the many implications of what Horace shares for automotive design and strategy.
If you want to cut to our analysis, fast forward to these points:

what does it mean for the industry to make a worse car, and where might we start? (starting at 24m 57s)
how does looking down versus looking out change how we think about designing for automobility? (starting at 50m)
and just how screwed are the economics of automobiles in a heavily urbanised future? (starting at 1h 14m 57s)

But of course, we'd love you to listen to the whole thing!
Show Links:

Citroen Ami One - a worse but better car
The Entrant’s Guide to Automotive Industry - Horace's perspective on how the auto industry works and the update.
Confessions of a Capital Junkie - Sergio Marchione's pivotal white paper on the automotive industry

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Show produced by: Chris Frith

That's it for this episode! Thanks for listening.
If you like what you hear, please leave a review for us on your favourite podcasting platform. It helps other folk like you find us!
And you can sign up for Looking Out - The Newsletter, the sidekick to our podcast, here: automobility.substack.com

what does it mean for the industry to make a worse car, and where might we start? (starting at 24m 57s)
how does looking down versus looking out change how we think about designing for automobility? (starting at 50m)
and just how screwed are the economics of automobiles in a heavily urbanised future? (starting at 1h 14m 57s)

But of course, we'd love you to listen to the whole thing!
Show Links:

Citroen Ami One - a worse but better car
The Entrant’s Guide to Automotive Industry - Horace's perspective on how the auto industry works and the update.
Confessions of a Capital Junkie - Sergio Marchione's pivotal white paper on the automotive industry

Previous Episode

EP04 - BMW's slightly scary i Vision Dee, Joe's EV run across Europe, and what CES teaches us about systems design.

In this episode of Looking Out - The Podcast, Joe and Drew discuss:

BMW's i Vision Dee, why some folk find her scary, and what she says about BMW's future
Joe's surprisingly normal Christmas run in an EV from Gothenburg to Leeds
Why CES left us longing for a more systemic approach from the auto industry to the challenges we face

Joe also gives a preview of an upcoming piece for Looking Out - The Newsletter about the Tesla Semi, and Drew wonders what Apple's struggles in China might mean for the automotive industry.
Show Links:

Next Episode

EP06 - Reimagining GM's culture for a post-CarPlay world, the Paris Scooter ban, and generative AI in design studios

In this episode:
GM's post-CarPlay Culture
So GM's gone out on a limb and said they're ditching Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for their next generation of cars. To help them on their way, they've hired Mike Abbot, formerly head of Apple's (notoriously) flakey iCloud services.
But we reckon that hiring a big name from another sector won't be enough to fulfil GM's connected car ambitions. The company will need to fundamentally rethink their culture, and we offer a few ideas for how they might get started.
The Paris Scooter Ban
Despite a voter turnout of only 7%, 89% of those voters decided to ban eScooters from the streets of Paris.
In one of the cities we've previously noted as on of the most progressive when it comes to adopting micromobility solutions, one which has invested heroically in reducing the dominance of the car, it was a sad day.
Joe references some research that shows why Parisians might have felt so strongly about the arrival of the scooters (hint: it has to do with parking), and we talk about the long arc of change in our city environments, and how we might work with it, rather than against it.
Generative AI and Auto Industry Biases
As the world debates whether AI is going to kill us or save us, some automotive designers have taken to generative AI tools like DALL.E and MidJourney with unsurpassed glee.
But as Drew reveals, the tools are currently perpetuating the worst of the automotive industry's biases when it comes to gender diversity, representation, and inclusion.
It's a rapidly evolving space and a split is already emerging between designers who love the tools, and those who are against the creative theft that underlies the models on which they're based.
We talk about the need for car companies to consciously and intentionally engage with these topics to make sure they're not caught up in another Volkswagen/Xinjinang situation.

Looking Out - The Podcast - EP05 - Horace Dediu on micromobility, and what it means for car makers

Transcript

[00:00:00] Joe:
Hi, it's Joe Simpson here, one half of the Looking Out crew. Not that long ago, the other half, drew interviewed a chap by the name of Horace Dediu. For those of you not familiar with Horace's work, he's a technology industry analyst focused on the world's most valuable company Apple. He's also the father of the term micromobility.

The catch-all phrase you might have heard for anything small that helps us move around, but there's not a car at this poi