The evolution of the Automobile: is it simply a chronology?
The evolution of the Automobile is linear progress. Each generation is better than the last, with human intelligence as the “engine”. This cannot be called into question.
And yet, for four centuries, the craftsman building a horse-drawn vehicle could handle the entire manufacture of his product. Has the car manufacturer’s situation really been linear in this respect?
In 1947, Pierre Burelle presented this drawing.
Just after the Second World War, he offered to make plastic parts for car manufacturers to cope with shortages of other raw materials. This was the birth of Plastic Omnium, one of the world’s largest groups producing sub-assemblies for the car industry.
This drawing marks the starting point of a shift for the craftsman/car manufacturer: from very low entropy, with very tight control over skills and manufacturing, to a loss of autonomy in favour of highly specialised and very efficient outside companies. In the late 2010s, the industry laughed when Tesla announced it would make its own seats.
And yet today, the extremely rapid rise of the Chinese car industry is based on the opposite model, made possible by starting from scratch.
Innocuous as it seems, this drawing is a real enigma. As with an archaeological discovery, we will try to find the artist and the inspiration behind this drawing, far ahead of its time. Then will come the moment to give it a real form, one it has never had.
The Future imagined in the past holds many surprises for us in the present.
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Every new adventure needs a manifesto:
“We declare our wish to take a fresh and comprehensive look at the car industry”