Open Source software is Microsoft's biggest headache - now a young German is attempting to bring the same headache to the car industry. Haydn Shaughnessyreports
Markus Merz is a soft spoken German marketing executive who talks calmly about altering car design for good. Merz runs the Oscar project, or Open Source Car, an attempt not just to design a future car in a rational way, but also to bring to its design what open source software brought to the IT industry.
The defining characteristic of open source is that all designs, inventions and innovations are public and free. Merz wants to put the utility of the vehicle and what it needs to do in the future, ahead of patents, trademarks and to a certain extent, aesthetics. This he says will cause a small earthquake in car design.
Unlikely, says Citroën's head of concept car design Giles Vidal. "The motorcar is a very particular product. It is a reflection of yourself and your life. People are not ready for a dramatic change for their next car like they might be with their furniture."
The truth is, though, that the Oscar rationale reflects an increasingly articulate dissatisfaction with the car industry that began with its environmental influence and now stretches to the marketing of cars as much as with their design and engineering. "I was working in the marketing department of a major manufacturer," says Merz, "and I was rather sick of what I saw. A lot of branding, and marketing and image but you don't get the car you want." Practicality took a back seat to marketing spin.
"Cars are built and bought as if they are to be sold again in two or three years time," says Merz. "But a car should be something you can improve many times. Modularity is important so that it can be later modified and upgraded."
The idea of upgradeability comes direct from the IT industry, as do the working practices that Oscar embraces: collaboration between people who are prepared to make no claim on the intellectual property of an innovation in return for the pleasure of working alongside people with the same passion.
Oscar is not alone. In the US, a group of engineers and designers, including some from the car industry, recently launched the Open Source Green Vehicle Project, an Oscar for the hybrid. At the same time, Open Source software is making an impact in in-car infotainment systems at a time when 90 per cent of the new functionality of cars is likely to be software based.
These initiatives are part of what trend watchers describe as "prosumerism", a widespread trend to involve consumers in the design and specification of products they buy.
The car industry is not immune to prosumerism, though with engineering and regulatory pressures forcing a uniformity on car design, appearance is increasingly what distinguishes one marque from another. Nonetheless some car-designers are opening up to a wider range of influences. BMW now runs a Virtual Innovation Agency that encourages small companies to contribute to the global BMW R&D network.
German software company Hyve is working with BMW to integrate customers into the innovation process.
Hyve has created a website where customers can download design tools and propose new developments for BMW's in-car telematics. Peugeot runs a competition to design the future car, open to all. Fiat, in theory at least, allows users to specify some of the options in its current cars through the company's websites.
Clearly at BMW, Fiat and other manufacturers, there's a desire to draw consumers into the design process, even if that is limited to peripherals and services.
For people like Merz these priorities miss the point. The car's purpose and place in society comes before any debate on how the car looks and what design trends consumers wish to follow. Merz and his colleagues start by asking questions about mobility rather than about emotion and brand identification.
The problem, according to Citroën's Vidal, is the consumer isn't ready for radical change. He says that such consumer desires are much more likely to be satisfied by further customisation of a car's appearance. New technologies already facilitate this at the prototype state of design.
"In the C-Metisse [Citroën's new concept car] all the interior is made with a process called stereo lithography," explains Vidal.
"You take a bucket with a powder in it and the laser solidifies and constructs a panel layer by layer. There are no constraints on what that panel can look like and it can be made there and then. I can imagine a factory designed around this process where the customer can specify their own car interior. It's not for tomorrow but it is possible."
How seriously then do you take a bunch of engineers and hobbyists who want to use their spare time to convert the car-industry to a new concept of the car?
"We're in discussion with one of the largest manufacturers," says Merz, "at board level and the decision is soon. With their involvement we'll have prototyping facilities and testing, and the production possibility is there."
If that happens we will see the small earthquake open source is promising though it seems likely this capital intensive industry will, like the IT industry before it, resist the possibility of seismic change.
In 1982 IBM was offered the chance to produce the personal computer and rejected it, quoting the PC's limited appeal. It took IBM 20 years to recover from that error. The Open Source movement may have the capacity to cause similar levels of embarrassment.
GILES VIDAL Head of concept car development at Citroën
Giles Vidal, Citroën's head of concept car development, believes the rush towards hybrid and alternative power sources for cars will be a defining influence on the future of their design: far more so than any consumer involvement.
"The new energy systems will affect design because manufacturers have to ask themselves how they will show these new energy sources in the car's appearance. Do we need to show different energy sources in our designs?" says Vidal, quoting the Prius as a car whose design he claims does not reflect the transformation in energy under the bonnet in a way that stirs the emotions.
The biggest changes up ahead though will be in these areas, according to Vidal, are to do with materials, electronics, batteries, and wiring.
All these additional factors and elements will change the basic construction of the car and force upon designers a complex range of decisions on what the future cars will look like. The decison, therefore is not solely down to consumers or designers but the results of engineering achievements. Then there's the new attitude to the environment within the public, which can be used to connect that sense of responsibility to the wider emotional appeal of cars.