Book Excerpt January 29, 2009, 5:00PM EST

Detroit Should Get Cracking on its Googlemobile

(page 4 of 4)

Alex Ostroy

Customers join Zipcar for $50 a month, then make reservations online and pick up a car in any number of garages, paying $9 an hour or $65 a day in New York, including insurance, gas, and 180 miles. One can get similar rates from traditional rental companies but with less flexibility and convenience. Zipcar says each of its cars replaces 15 privately owned vehicles and 40% of its members decide to give up owning a car. I know what you're thinking (and can hear the peals of laughter from Detroit): The last thing a car company should want is fewer cars. Are you nuts, Jarvis? Are you a communist or some tree-hugging fanatic? No. I'm just turning the industry upside-down.

When I asked adman Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer of the ad giant Publicis, which works in the auto industry, what business car companies are really in, he said it's not making cars. He channeled the Googley car company and said: "I'm in the business of moving people from place A to place B. How can I do it in different ways? And as they are moving from place A to place B, how do I make them feel secure and connected?" He said that aside from sleep, we spend more time moving around than at home. And what is the automobile really about? "Navigation and entertainment," he said. Not necessarily manufacturing. Manufacturing is expensive, vulnerable to commodity pricing, labor-intensive, and competitive. There's the tyranny of atoms vs. digits.

What if a car company became the leader in getting people around and it used others' hardware: planes, trains, and automobiles? I tell your system where I need to go and you give me choices at various price points: Today, I can take the train for less. Tomorrow, I can drive because I'm running errands. The day after, I'll carpool to save money. This weekend, I get a nice Mercedes to take my wife to dinner. Next week, I get a chauffeur-driven car to impress the clients. Along the way, I can pay for options: my entertainment synced in the car, wireless connectivity on the train, alerts to my iPhone, a navigation concierge who directs me around traffic jams. This is the new personal transportation company, a platform built on the old car company model. Hop aboard the Googlemobile.

From the book What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. © 2009 Jeff Jarvis (published by Collins Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers).

Jarvis writes about the Internet and media on his Buzzmachine.com blog and teaches at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism

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