We’ve seen how lifestyle
vehicles can increase energy use. The popularity of SUVs is a good example of how a sort
of "image" can influence choices, and those choices lead to significantly higher
fuel consumption. But nobody buys an SUV to go trailblazing. Consumers are
turned on to the personality of SUVs, the vehicle theme, and they buy these
four-wheel-drive trucks to drive around the city. Well this same type of dynamic can work
in reverse.
The real reason we buy a particular car is for the effect it has on our
brain chemistry. What most of us are really paying for is that wonderful endorphin
rush.
People buy SUVs because they feel good wearing them. They buy new VW
Beetles because they strike an emotional cord. And they don’t buy Smart Cars
because no one feels very hot driving one. But if they bought Smart Cars like they
buy SUVs, if Smart Cars turned them on like SUV do, then energy demand would drop - and it
would drop by a lot - and it would have little or nothing to with technology and
everything to do with design.
One of the most difficult things for us humans to do is to step outside
our own mindset and see things from a different perspective. So I’ll tell you a story
about in-line skates before I go on.
Before in-line skates were invented, if you did a market study to find out what
consumers wanted in their skates, you would have found that they wanted quieter wheels,
better bearings, a more comfortable fit - but the study would have never told you that
consumers wanted skates with the wheels in line, instead of side-by-side. And if you had
asked consumers what they thought of the idea of skates having in-line wheels, I’m
sure they would have told you that they wouldn’t be interested - that it was a lousy
product idea. Today, in-line skates are a global business of half a billion dollars
- and they came from a vision rendered in superior design, rather than an analysis of the
market. I noticed a blurb in this morning's newspaper that they are considering the
idea of making in-line skates an Olympic event. "Design" can be a
very powerful tool for slashing energy intensity.
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