The trouble with evolution is that it happens slowly and is seemingly absent of order. It is often confusing, difficult to decipher, devoid of spectacular happenings. As a result, while in progress, evolution seldom makes the front pages or the evening news.
That's too bad, because an understanding of evolution, as it applies to the world of cars and trucks, could help consumers better understand what is happening in today's automotive world.
Such understanding tends to get blurred by the needs of the moment, and I've often been a part of that blurring. I happily spend most of my life test-driving new cars and trucks around the world and then rushing back to my computer to tell you about the experience -- how it felt to be in a particular vehicle in a particular place and time, how that vehicle performed within the parameters of its intended market, that sort of thing.
I do this regularly in my Sunday column, On Wheels, as well as in the weekly Real Wheels chat on washingtonpost.com. Also on the Web site is my weekly Overdrive column, where I attempt to take you deeper into the peculiarities of the automotive industry and how they affect your consumer choices and life behind the wheel.
But it's never enough, partly because the industry changes so rapidly -- while at the same time appearing not to change at all.
So, in this space, the first attempt to collect my columns in a handy print format, I want to tell you about those deep-seated changes, the things that go unnoticed, while also taking a look at some cars and trucks recently driven. My editor calls this a "Car Guide." I call it a starting point for future conversations on things automotive. Please join me and, yes, feel free to send your insights and disagreements to me at brownw@washpost.com, or browar54@earthlink.net, the latter being my easiest-to-use address on the road.
Those industry changes? Suffice it to say that they are substantially more profound than the reshaping of sheet metal, the development of plug-in technology such as electronic navigation systems, or even the much-discussed proliferation of "crossover" vehicles -- those three-in-one and sometimes four-in-one machines that attempt to combine the virtues of sport-utility vehicles, pickup trucks, minivans and sedans atop one set of wheels.
The real changes taking place have much to do with the realities of fuel supplies -- who owns them, who distributes them, who has access to them and at what cost. Those are not the kinds of things auto manufacturers emphasize at automotive shows, where glitz and sizzle, conjured in pursuit of the next model year's sales, are often the order of the day.
But visits to the research laboratories, design studios and test tracks of those auto companies tell another story.
There is real, big-bucks, literally corporate life-and-death activity going on to replace the more-than-century-old internal-combustion engine as we have come to know and love and hate it. Its demise is inevitable. It is just a matter of when. It will probably take a long time.
And though it is fashionable in Washington to believe that the death of the gasoline engine will occur through "technology-forcing regulation," the real-world evidence is that fossil fuels are running out just as potentially new, lucrative global automotive markets are opening up. Without long-term sources of acceptable fuels to run the cars and trucks that auto manufacturers want to sell, how will car companies exploit those new markets? How many high-horsepower V-8 gasoline engines can a company sell in Beijing? With Germany and Japan having limited access to oil, is it logical for car companies in those countries to ignore the promise of alternative fuel technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, diesel-electric gasoline engines, clean-burning common-rail diesel engines, compressed natural gas or the less effective but more politically acceptable -- at least in the United States -- gasoline-electric hybrid cars?
Also, though automotive journalists (and I sadly count myself among them) of late have had much fun chortling over the death of battery-powered cars, the truth is that we've greatly exaggerated their passing.
Yes, Ford earlier this year scrapped its Think electric-car program in Europe. But a closer look at what's really happening behind the doors of the world's car companies shows something else: All of them still have some degree of advanced battery research in progress. But their aim, this time, isn't to develop a mass-market battery-powered automobile. The goal is to develop battery-operated vehicles to serve specific, short-range communities -- college and corporate campuses; small resort communities such as South Padre Island, Tex.; retirement communities; and the like.
None of this, of course, will happen with the kind of speed needed to attract, titillate and hold short attention spans. For example, though Toyota, Honda, DaimlerChrysler and General Motors all say they will have some version of a hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle ready for use in two or three years, the truth is that those initial models will be demonstration vehicles.
Hydrogen fuel cells are enormously complex. They produce mostly clean drive power through an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. How to get, distribute and store that hydrogen in a car remains a collective problem -- one that ultimately will be solved. But for mass commercial applicability, it probably won't happen for another decade.
The problem is that the auto industry is a brutally capital-intensive business. That means tomorrow's cars are financed by sales of today's models. If today's models don't sell, there is no tomorrow for the auto company that misjudges current market demand.
That is why things often appear so crazy, so maddeningly at odds in the global auto industry. Toyota, for example, rightfully prides itself on the development of its clean-burning, fuel-efficient, gas-electric-hybrid Prius sedan. But though the technology is marvelous, there is no way that Toyota can sell enough of those little cars (at about $20,000 per copy) to stay in business.
As a result, Toyota also sells a huge array of not-so-fuel-economical sport-utility vehicles such as the 4Runner and big pickup trucks such as the Tundra.
Neither Mercedes-Benz nor General Motors nor Ford nor Volkswagen can afford to miss any part of the market and hope to stay in business, which is why Porsche (can you believe it!?) is bringing out its Cayenne sport-utility vehicle for 2003 sales.
So, as you read this guide, do so with the knowledge that you're looking at something transient. The vehicles featured, many of them a joy to drive and own, nearly all of them promising to give you long and reliable service, are on the road to obsolescence.
Do not feel cheated. Life is movement. Movement is change. Anyone who or anything that fails to move on dies. It's the way it is. Deal with it, and be happy.
