remember when concept cars were fun? car companies would draw up outrageous supercars with completely implausible power, ridiculous proportions, and absolutely unlivable ergonomics. they'd trot these things out at auto shows, and everybody would gawk and slobber and tell them, "you have to build that!" and they never would, except for chrysler. roughly a third of the chrysler products from the past 30 years are a result of a double-dog dare. it's amazing they didn't actually follow through with the dodge tomahawk, that viper-engined motorcycle.
oh, how times have changed. every new concept car is now a generic autonomous electric box with seats that swivel around to face each other and probably a bunch of big screens inside. an executive who wants to seem forward-thinking will trot out the latest ennui pod and say something like, "this is a new paradigm in multi-platform urban mobility integration, leveraging applied infrastructure digitalization and robust autonomous connected network spaces, both shared and last-mile." no way, stop it! last-mile is our jam. you can drink in these things, right?
so let's talk about this jaguar land rover vector, unveiled this week in coventry. it's not like we're surprised to see another near-future rectilinear mobility cube, but from jaguar? or is it land rover? the fact that they bestowed this bummer bus with the jlr corporate name, rather than either jaguar or land rover, tells you something about the towering ambivalence behind projects like this.
whether the vector is a jaguar or a land rover doesn't even matter, because this type of vehicle represents a great flattening of automotive identity. look at local motors' olli. and the volkswagen sedric. and the cruise origin. notice anything in common? that's right: they're all exactly the same vehicle! jaguar didn't offer specs on the vector for the simple reason that they're unimportant and nobody cares.
there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of a small, self-driving electric bus. but perhaps jaguar land rover should follow gm's lead and set up a separate company to build such a thing. because what galls isn't so much the product itself—even though said product is so boring, it's the vehicular embodiment of resting billie eilish face. no, the real problem is the cognitive dissonance that arises when you see companies like jaguar land rover—ones you associate with driving, and racing, and off-road overland heroics—wade into "mobility."
call this thing the cheerio hackey booth if you like, but don't make us think of e-types and f-types and defenders and all that is lost when the destination subsumes the journey.
anyway, the plan is to have these things rolling around coventry next year. in the meantime, go drive a jaguar. they're fun.