Progress is a formality
Dear reader,
There is a lot of moaning about how we are delaying the "mobility turnaround". And the moral cudgel is always involved: Apparently, a large proportion of car drivers simply refuse to do the right thing and switch to an electric vehicle or even an e-bike. People are stupid and lazy! But anyone who walks the streets with their eyes open will notice that this transformation is failing not least because, to put it bluntly, it looks like shit.
In other words, it's a lack of good form and a lack of awareness of aesthetics. To understand this, you don't have to go to the extreme and, for example, place a beautiful Bianchi wheel (made of steel) next to the visual (and acoustic!) wreckage of the "Urban Arrow" cargo bike. Even a cursory glance at the electric disasters from Volkswagen and Mercedes reveals the design crisis: the ID 4 looks like a "pig on high heels" and the EQS "banana-shaped melted", to quote the architectural historian Niklas Maak. Moreover, most electric cars are not only far too big; they also regularly try to dominate the public space in a decidedly unpleasant way - with a comic-like, ultra-aggressive look, with huge radiator grilles and pointless power domes.
Yet we should know how transformation works in the automotive industry, because we have already successfully implemented it once before: In the 1970s, when new small cars with revolutionary new shapes were developed and built, especially in Germany. Not cute like the MINI, not toy-like like the Fiat 500, but clear, serious and good, in the best Bauhaus tradition: like the Audi 50, the Golf, of course, and the Ford Fiesta. Incidentally, their designers were Nuccio Bertone, Giorgetto Guigario and Tom Tjaarda, and none of them came from Germany. More importantly, however, they all built the boldest and coolest sports cars, for Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and De Tomaso, as well as Marcello Gandini, who designed the Lamborghini Miura and the Renault 5.
And perhaps it is precisely this daring that is so lacking in the design of electromobility today and is now creating this aesthetic void that is preventing us from moving forward and preventing change. Because change needs good form more than good morals.
Or what do you think?