[Video via The Auto Channel]

Ivan, one of my coworkers here in London, has a funny way to describe his admiration for his former employer BMW; he just paces back and forth muting they cover and master every single angle of the business, e.v.e.r.y single one, all while shaking his head in disbelief.

Proving Ivan right, BMW announced last week that they were starting a premium car-sharing program in Germany.

The news comes right on the heels of their February announcement of the i sub-brand, a division that wants to be to environmental vehicles what the M brand represents to performance, as well as the launch of i-ventures, their venture capital arm.

Why would a conventional car company move into such a fundamental threat to their core business as car-sharing? While the launch of the i sub-brand is understandable from a product point of view, creating a venture firm and a car-sharing organization might seem, at first glance, odd. I see three possible explanations:

1- The Conspiracy theory: eyeing car-sharing as an attack to the fundamentals of their business model, BMW has decided to start its own car-sharing company and get in the game, only to follow with a string of acquisitions (Zipcar?) that will ultimatly allow them to dominate the business. Full domination achieved, they will declare the division a money loosing operation and close it down. Very unlikely, but we have seen this movie before.

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My friend and mentor Dan Sturges is one of the panelists. What do they talk about? :

In the last 1.0 hundred years mobility was largely about automobile ownership.  The conversation now moves to the role of vehicles in a more complex mobility mix.  How must automakers adapt?

This webcast was live at 9AM PST on December 9th.

The LA Auto Show press days came and went. As a car show, it is a weird hybrid event, certainly more than a regional auto show, yet still not recognized by most auto makers or the media as the international event it could and should be. California is, after all, the biggest car market in the US (accounting for one out of every ten vehicles), and many auto trends still start here. Most Asian companies have their headquarters here as well, and although engineering is mostly done in Michigan, the LA area has by far the highest concentration of car design studios in the world. Lastly, but very importantly, any media person you ask would admit that they would rather spend a couple of warm November days in Los Angeles than enjoying Detroit in early January (although things are not as bad at NAIAS since they moved, a few years ago, their nonsensical January 2nd opening day to mid January).

Back in 2007 and especially 2008, with Toyota (based in Torrance, near LAX) taking over as biggest car manufacturer in the world, the Chinese market making another giant Leap Forward, the Big Three drowning in debt, and a thriving EV start-up scene ready to take over, it looked like the time had come to move the only US-based international auto show from Detroit to Los Angeles.

Two years (and $60 Federal billion) later, with an invigorated Ford, a stumbling Toyota, a very successful government IPO, and Californian VCs starting to think that perhaps social media is an easier bet than green-tech, the LA Auto Show seems to be going back to its previous, almost there status.

On the EV front, there is no doubt that this is a transitional period. Green champion Schwarzenegger is out of the picture, and the lingering recession is still present, so the activity looked to me a bit subdued. After several years of increasing EV buzz, everyone seems to be taking a breather. Nevertheless, several themes where clearly noticeable:

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Although the US elections dominated the media last week, there was another piece of news with probably bigger consequences to our global mobility world. Sure, sure, sure, the Republicans took over and the Tea Party movement got a few people in Washington, but so what. Now, instead of filibuster everything on the Senate, they simply won't pass it in Congress. The end result will be just the same gridlock we have enjoyed over the past couple of years.

Bypassing this gridlock, going along on its own, and under the cover of a media obsessed with analyzing the election results, the Federal Reserve pressed the Print button for the second time since 2008, this time pulling $600 billion out of our (future) behinds. This was, arguably, as important as who won the election.

Why did the Fed do it? You can read Bernanke's op-ed here, or simply look at this chart:

[Chart from Calculated Risk via The Big Picture]

Scary, isn't it? Long term unemployment is (literally) off the charts, and the US economy seems unable to recover as rapidly as it used to do in past recessions.

To get the economy out of neutral, the Fed is flooding the system with freshly printed money, which should push the stock market higher, which should make people feel richer, which should help them spend more and therefore stimulate the economy. Or so the theory goes. It is nothing but another (undercover) stimulus package, something Tea Party members will certainly not be happy about.

Why is this a concern for a blog dedicated to mobility?

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[Image credit: itMoves]

My seventy eight years old father, with whom I still keep correspondence (the kind you write by hand, remember that?) sends me a couple of catalogues from a Daimler-Smart exhibition currently taking place a few blocks from the old neighborhood in Madrid.

Inside a tent, one can find the winners of the Smart Future Minds Award Madrid 2010, an exhibition that will display a selection of visionary projects that address the issues of future urban living and mobility (more info here).

Alongside the exhibition (mostly about architecture and urbanism), there are several Smart EVs for people to test drive which, according to my dad, are proving to be quite popular.

When he told me over the phone, my first and only question was Do they have the price?. No, he said. In other words, a dog-n-pony show.

What a surprise (insert sarcastic emoticon here).

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[Image credit: Renault]

The fantastic Renault Twizy is the most significant new vehicle in the lower end of the market since the introduction of the Smart ForTwo over a decade ago*. It is also the very first vehicle from a major manufacturer to be designed from scratch as an electric car (Leafs and Volts carry over many parts from other vehicles).

The little Twizy is, of course, a tandem two seater, which is one of its biggest assets but also, in my opinion, one of its liabilities. Let me explain.

Despite the fact that most of us do most of our trips alone, we still see driving as a communal experience. Solo trips tend to fade from our memory, and we prefer to remember the good rides: holidays with the family (as a kid or as a parent), romantic let's take the long road home, honey strolls, nights out with our friends... a minimum of two seats seems, therefore, essential. As essential, perhaps, as the capability to drive 300 miles any time any day (although the so called range anxiety should be a topic for another day).

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[Image credit: itMoves]

Last week's widely publicized admission by Google that they have indeed a fleet of automatically driven vehicles goes beyond the anecdotal; it represents a small but very significant step towards clean mobility worthy of the XXI century.

I will not spend too much time on the details: seven cars, 140,000 miles, only one accident (caused by another driver rear-ending the Google car). Of those miles, at least 1,000 were covered without human intervention. Even more amazing, the vehicles were perfectly legal according to the California DMV, since a liable human was always behind the wheel ready to override any error (even if she was not necessarily holding that wheel at all times...)

Of course self driven cars are not new. The Japanese and Europeans have been working on it for many years (Wikipedia has of course some details). In the US, Honda, Toyota and GM were working together at the the National Automotive Highway Consortium back in 1998 (campy Popular Mechanics page here).

While working at GM Advanced Studio, we were a very close second at the 2007 California Design Challenge with our OnStar ANT. Two years later, we also participated on the Puma project, the self-balancing Segway two seater (which were intended to be shown as automatically driven at the Shanghai Expo, althought I am not sure if they accomplished the goal).

So if it's old news, why should we consider it significant?

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[Image credit: itMoves]

The recent AltCar Expo in Santa Monica gave me the opportunity to finally see, sit and briefly sample the Nissan Leaf. My opinion? In their effort to seriously undercut any possible competitor, and to firmly position the car as a mainstream model, Nissan might have pushed a little too hard in a couple of aspects of the vehicle.

It is undeniable that Nissan shocked many people when they announced their $32,780 price for the Leaf back in March. Following anecdotal evidence (Mini-e lease price, some rumors regarding the Smart EV, GM openly talking about a $40k Volt), I had been saying for over a year that $40k was going to be the entry price for any mainstream EV. The announced price, paired with the generous federal and state incentives (which drop the price in California to around $20k) was therefore a very nice surprise.

Unfortunately there is no free lunch, and since Li-ion batteries have not dropped their price 50% overnight, Nissan had to make certain compromises. Two stand out in my book, one technical and one emotional.

The technical compromise has to do with the lack of thermo management for the battery pack. Many people have complained; Elan Musk called them primitive back in August, and a recent chat with Coda executives confirmed that they see their bigger, actively thermo managed battery pack as a competitive advantage for their $44,900 sedan. On the other hand, the quite knowledgeable woman explaining the Leaf's technology at their Electric Drive Event pointed out that Nissan has been extensibly testing in Arizona, and that the chemistry used in their batteries is less sensitive to heat than some of their competitor's.

Whose PR is right? I personally find it hard to believe that Nissan would come out to the market with a battery pack that would perform so dramatically different in warm climates. Cars are not mp3 players, and although first adopters might accept limitations from companies like Aptera and Coda, I don't see Nissan risking their reputation that easily, specially since they seem to be betting the company's future on EVs. All in all, I am cautiously on Nissan's side.

The second compromise regards design, and as a professional I can't give Nissan a pass here. The thing is hideous.

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[PS image credit: itMoves]

With frustration mounting over the inability of the Obama administration to fulfill many of their pledges and promises (helped in no small part by an irresponsible party of NO), why hold back from our modest EV side? There is little to lose, now that it looks like we'll be facing an even more paralyzed Senate (can you believe it?) after the November elections.

As it is well known, one of the first and most promising decisions by the Obama administration was to set aside $25bn in loan guaranties to support the President’s goal to create green jobs in the automotive and component manufacturing industries. Although a small amount (compared to a $3.8 trillion budget, of which some $226bn were dedicated to DARPA), it was certainly a move in the right direction, at a time when the nascent industry needed it the most. It promised companies (and more importantly, their early investors) that there was light at the end of their R&D tunnel, where money would be available to take promising new ideas past the pre-production stage and into the real world. By the time Congress appropriated the budget in fall 2008, the global capital markets had frozen (remember Lehman?), and with private funding all of the sudden gone, these DOE loans looked like the only game in town.

Alas, in a wonderful demonstration of lobbying trouncing common sense, the biggest chunk went to Ford for retooling (obviously as a consolation prize after GM got $50bn, or maybe just to shut them up), with the second biggest going to Nissan (really? does a company with $90bn in revenue need $1.6bn from the DOE?). Tesla also got their loan, not without some drama (including a sneaky price rise of $6k that angered many of their early customers) before they miraculously announced their one and only profitable month. By the time Fisker got their piece of the pie, back in September '09, something funny was happening (as Darryl Siry smartly exposed on Wired last December): investors were no longer interested in companies which have not been anointed by the Federal Government.

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[PS image credit: itMoves]

What would the world of electronics look like if Apple behaved like a car company? What products would Jonathan Ive dream up if he had to deal with the same compromises that car designers have to deal with on a daily basis, from carry over components to carry over managers to carry over imagination?

A friend of itMoves, Steve F, pointed me towards this Autoblog Green post where the recently departed BMW head of design Chris Bangle talks about avatars, EVs, golf ball shaped cars and even sharing (gasp!).

I don't want to single out Mr Bangle. I have many friends who worked for him, and unlike other personalities in the industry, I am not aware he left any trail of discontented subordinates. But since he spoke out, I will use him as an excuse to discuss why highly talented, even visionary people, get drown out inside the car industry. Let's start with the obvious question:

Why didn't he do anything about it while at BMW?

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