INDEPENDENT SPEED ADAPTATION
By Christopher | February 21, 2010
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I have spent the week in the excellent Toyota Prius - but in a model fitted with Independent Speed Adaptation (ISA).
The electronics let you select two modes:
Advisory just tells you what the speed limit is and it beeps at you if you exceed it and the smiling face turns to a crying face.
Voluntary absolutely prevents you from exceeding the limit. It beeps at you and the face changes just like in advisory mode - except that this time you hit a speed wall above which the car will not go.
I was doubtful at first.
Transport for London TfL has produced a digital map of nearly all the roads within the M25 and I thought I would be content to be told what the speed limit was all the time but I was quite defensive about handing control of excess speeding to the electronics. “I am the driver” I said to myself and I do not want to hand over control to a computer.
Within half an hour I had changed my mind. It is fantastic having a helper on board to make the driving experience more enjoyable, helping you achieve even more responsible driving and, the bottom line, preventing you from picking up a speeding ticket. I like my weather responsive wind shield wipers, I like my light responsive lighting system, I loved the Prius automatic self parking system - so why not have some help on my speed control?
I realised that my initial prejudice was just that - prejudice. At the end of the week I very much regretted having to hand back the car to TfL. The technology is in the development stage but it is clearly sufficiently well developed to impress and to deliver real benefit.
Christopher Macgowan
Topics: Technology | No Comments »
TOYOTA
By Christopher | February 17, 2010
Anyone who knows Toyota well will be saddened by the recall elephant trap into which the company has fallen so spectacularly. Recalls are not new and it needs to be pointed out that the motor industry has a necessary and brilliant record of successfully contacting an incredibly high percentage of owners when something needs to be looked at. It is right we should be good at reaching our customers - but when you see in a newspaper a rather timid advertisement announcing a defect on a white goods product you realise we are in a rather different and more effective league.
Clearly the sheer scale of the Toyota recalls has caught people’s attention but I think it is more the perception that because Toyota quality is such a given - the company virtually invented it - somehow Toyota should be immune from such tawdry events as a global recall. It isn’t and more importantly never has been but the company’s human frailty has caught the imagination and the question everyone is asking is “How could this happen to Toyota of all people?” The question reflects the very high esteem in which the company is held and is rather asked out of bewilderment than criticism.
I have a view.
Toyota is enormously well run and its “right first time” and “continuous improvement” philosophies have swept the world and are emulated globally.
But the Toyota DNA which makes this possible is a deeply embedded culture, much of it written down but even more carried forward through the very soul of the company. When Toyota started its expansion beyond Japanese shores it was able to transplant highly trained people - invariably Master Engineers - to run these new Toyota enterprises, train local people in the Toyota way of doing things and genuinely transplant the culture. Such an example would be the Toyota plant in Derby which brought a seemingly radical new concept to the UK - of all places - and implemented it there and then. Ably assisted by the hiring of Sir Alan Jones at its inception in 1990 becoming Managing Director in 2001. In those days a visit to the Burnaston, Derby factory was a mirror image of any Toyota plant in Japan and so successful was and still is the UK plant that product is now exported to Japan from the UK.
However, automotive globalisation took off at a pace nobody could have foreseen and it is my contention that many companies - and Toyota is just one example and so should not be singled out in the recall frenzy - have struggled to have anything like enough people available to insert the philosophy in new ventures around the world. In the early days it was a struggle because of cultural differences but it was done and successfully delivered and implemented. More recently having enough evangelists to utterly uncompromisingly deliver a new culture and a new way of doing things has stretched corporations sorely.
It is hardly surprising; these brilliantly successful techniques were honed to perfection in Japan and they were proved to be transferable with great effort and dedication. But when those valuable - in fact priceless - resources started to be stretched as I believe they were due to the pace of globalisation, one or two degrees of intensity and completeness were lost. Not intentionally, not by choice and certainly not spotted at the time.
Manufacturing excellence is a given for many automotive companies. Product reliability and perfection is now demanded and delivered. Phoning the boss to say you will be late for work because the car won’t start is no longer plausible.
I believe the pace of globalisation is resulting in the ability to deliver perfection through the culture we have come to respect to be under duress and threat. It can be put right, and Toyota will do so, but it will be so difficult for those companies who have preached perfection and continuous improvement to accept that for a while they will be the patient after years of being the gifted physician.
Christopher Macgowan
Topics: Manufacturing, This and That | No Comments »
STOURHEAD NATIONAL TRUST.
By Christopher | January 17, 2010
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What a great spot Stourhead is near Warminster in Wiltshire!! Well worth a visit - although you will be lucky to see it under such wonderful snowy conditions such as my partner and I found when we were there last week!!
Christopher Macgowan
Topics: This and That | No Comments »
2010
By Christopher | January 4, 2010
I guess the easy bit is just to wish you a Happy New Year! The slightly more complicated bit is to forecast what sort of year I am happying you into.
Still recovering from the missed forecasts of 2009 most people are being pretty circumspect about the 2010 UK prospects so it seems appropriate to attempt some more specific forecasting rather than leaving everyone confused by platitudes and cautious legal language.
Frankly the forecasting task is made more difficult by the certainty of a general election but it seems 2010 will wretchedly see unemploymemt rising to 2.9 million and probably staying there. Inflation will hit 3.5% with interest rates remaining at or around 1% and largely ineffective on the real economy. And I can see just a 1% growth in the economy which is not exciting and, sadly, a fall in house prices of about 5%.
Car registrations are difficult to read because history cannot help with what will happen now the scrappage scheme is off and VAT is back to 17.5%. Whilst I am obviously outrageously biased towards the SMMT and its forecasts I am in fact forecasting a 1.8 million new car registrations figure for 2010.
So in summary a difficult year; the good news comes from the fact the automotive industry has suffered massive pain in 2009 and whilst likely to bump along in some pain in 2010 the worst is behind us. Saab and Alfa Romeo look to be the brands with a tough and uncertain future - Saab is well documented and Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne is the first man in a long time at Fiat to be thinking the unthinkable and seemingly wanting each brand to be profitable in its own right.
In wishing you a Happy New Year I am essentially forecasting an extremely difficult year and can only hope we have all made the really tough survival decisions in 2009 that will take us through 2010.
And my pet hate? Numerous experts saying things will never get back to where they were. Of course we will reap the benefit of our lower cost base but it is just plain old human nature that when things improve we start wanting to do more (good) and then start accepting costs back into the business model and getting fat again (BAD)!!
Christopher Macgowan
Topics: This and That | No Comments »
SAAB
By Christopher | December 20, 2009
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First of all a very Happy Christmas to you. My picture was taken this morning in my village and is of the school opposite which I live.
Could there be a last minute reprieve for SAAB? Looks like Spyker is coming back to GM with a revised package so the brand might survive after all.
The surprising thing about this global recession is that we have not seen more brands falling by the wayside. It just goes to prove how resilient these brands are and I certainly hope for the many people working within SAAB that it survives. The analytical side of me says however that the brand has been on the edge for many years - some would say GM never invested what was needed - and even if it does win a reprive - will we all be back here again in a year as the brand totters?
There is even talk of LDV surviving so it just goes to show there is no such thing as a no hoper.
Christopher Macgowan
Topics: Marketing | No Comments »
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