In his most recent book, Stephen Bayley, an architect by trade and founder of the Design Museum in London describes the car as the greatest cultural and design phenomenon of the 20th century before musing that we are now seeing the Age of Combustion come to its end.
“In design terms, the Age of Combustion was as rich and varied as architecture’s Baroque – and far more popular. And now it is coming to an end, as the internal-combustion engine is superseded by the battery and cars become wheeled computers, running on AI not oil,” writes Bayley.
The book itself has been described as a celebration of all-things automotive, an almost tinted-window look at a golden age where the rumble of an engine signalled freedom and symbolised the hopes of an age now passed. At a time, where many people – often in this magazine – are talking about the democratisation of mobility, the freedom to pick and choose how and when you want to travel, it is worth pondering that a century ago we already had it. All powered by the explosion of fuel under our bonnets.
There is a reason people talk about range anxiety and also feel range anxiety behind the wheel of an electric vehicle. An open road is no longer open to you if you are questioning the battery info on your dashboard, and you’re worrying whether you will be find a charging point up ahead. Well, if you can find and afford an EV that is.
I get that and I get Bayley. When Audi talks about moving to fully electric in a timespan you can measure in months, as they do in this issue of T&FME, many of us will feel an element of regret that we are passing into a new age with fewer certainties of the past.
That’s progress folks. And now it’s up to those that are working in EV, AI, AV – and in any of your favourite mobility initials – to remember that we have to be replacing the old with a new that gives as many people as possible a chance to see and feel the opportunities ahead of us. Pulling down the rose-tinted windows on the past, for a second, it is vital that we recognise that it took decades for most people to fully enter the Age of Combustion.
Now we have a chance to reach as many people as possible, let’s ensure that we don’t keep the phenomenon of mobility locked into the richest pockets and the most lucrative areas.
We need mobility in all its forms for as many people as possible – and to do that we need governments, private enterprise and all of us with a hand on the steering wheel to work together.
