Leaving the Car ?

Yes, it will last: the car, certainly; petrol, most likely. It would be nice to be able to announce that a “turning point” had been reached…it’s even tempting, given the number of “weak signals”, to declare the end of the car civilisation.

However, the qualities that underlie its universal success are still with us: versatility, autonomy, performance. Our mobile societies continue to set great store by a tool that is so well adapted to our needs and desires in terms of travel. Clearly, the car has a number of flaws: it’s expensive (though its relative cost is constantly decreasing); every year it takes more than a million lives and leaves nearly 50 million people injured (although this collateral damage, curiously, is well-tolerated); it pollutes the air (though less and less); and it consumes scarce resources, space and energy (although space is only scarce in densely-populated urban areas).

Technological innovation will enable petrol to be replaced in part by other energy sources, and petrol consumption per kilometre to be reduced. Social inventiveness will lead to a more mutualised approach to the car, e.g. car-sharing and car-pooling. When you consider that cars are normally only occupied by their owner and are parked 95% of the time, there is room for improvement!

The longstanding nature of (highly capitalistic) infrastructures often leads people to think that behaviour also remains unchanged. And yet, even when the underlying network/support structures remains the same, the network/service aspect (i.e. the way these infrastructures are actually used) changes. The typical passenger on the Paris Metro or the London Underground of today is not the same as in 1900.

Instead, our mobility behaviours are most likely going to diversify. The “mono-modal” (or car-dominated mobility) most often seen in Western countries will give way to more sophisticated strategies, from both the point of view of transport supply and travel practices.

This reorganisation should result in a double rehabilitation:

• of slowness (taking a boat instead of a plane, using an electric bicycle instead of a car), once people have collectively realised that speed doesn’t actually save time but merely consumes more space (not to mention its financial and energy costs);
• and of the use of our legs (walking and cycling), whose efficiency remains unmatched today.

From this point of view, yes, we will be readopting some of our ancestors’ ways.

The change might indeed be found in the trivialisation of the car as an object. Nevertheless, it won’t be forgotten; its overwhelming past and future importance rules out any likelihood of amnesia. But, yes, it could be given a different function solely based on its utilitarian uses. There are a number of indicators to support this theory, such as a relative loss of interest among young people as regards driving licences and car ownership in Western Europe – NDLR, but with a corollary interest in the digital universe.

Does the car still play such an important role in contemporary culture? It certainly does in the United States - a world of wide open spaces, road movies and Edward Hopper-styled service stations. In Europe, it’s less likely. The car clearly provided the structure for post-World War II economic development, but without ever really earning a place in social representations.

Children continue to play, a bit, with small cars (and trains). The World Motor Show continues to be a success. But our fascination with the automobile is now similar to that of the “electricity fairy”. Socio-economic realities have replaced fairy tale magic.