I just want the easiest conduit, the least bad version, something that works every time and is deliberately designed to be unannoying.
For me, this is the optimum that user-facing car software can be. I’m not convinced it’s enough reason alone to buy a car, although I am 100% sure that it’s enough reason to not buy one. Does that amount to the same thing?
Which brings me to part two of how not to be a car company: for want of a less cringey phrase, be a lifestyle company.
In the past month, I’ve driven new cars from, and spoken to the bosses of, Rolls-Royce and Morgan. They’re different companies in that one makes uber-luxury limos and the other makes driver-focused sports cars, but in so many ways they’re the same.
They sell you a beautiful object and also an experience, and while both make cars, a buyer isn’t necessarily contemplating a new vehicle as an alternative place to put their money.
Anything from an old Land Rover to a house extension or a boat or a small island is a rival to what these companies make.
From time to time, I think about buying an old Caterham. Competing for my money is not what one would consider a direct Caterham rival but an Indian motorcycle or a new greenhouse.
Rolls-Royce, Morgan, Caterham: these are luxury companies as much as car companies, and that’s a formula that does work. It requires no reinvention and no trying to convince buyers that they should want something they’ve never wanted before.
And as and when new tech or new interfaces are needed, companies and buyers want them to be as stable and unintrusive as is possible.
Of these two car-making-but-not-car-company approaches, I know which I find more compelling and whose cars I would ultimately rather spend more time in.
It’s the ones that let me feel and enjoy the tangible, dynamic parts of vehicle technology and otherwise leave me alone.
