What Does the Future Car Enthusiast Look Like?
What Does the Future Car Enthusiast Look Like?
The culture of car enthusiasm is changing. You heard it here first: in ten years, the tattooed mechanics doing doughnuts in hotel parking lots at SEMA will be replaced by crowds of computer programmers.
It’s early October, and our favorite automotive event is just under a month away, hosted by the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) in Vegas. For car enthusiasts like us, SEMA is a big deal.
The majority of those who attend SEMA are tinkerers by nature. They flock to the event hoping to see vehicles outfitted with enormous engines, turbochargers, and rock-crawling tires. This crowd is tough, mechanically savvy, and serious about cars.
What is driving this change?
Cultural shifts within the car industry are nothing new. There have always been generational divides. The cars of the 1970s were carbureted, loud, and took up a lot of space. The cars of the early 2000s were fuel-injected, maneuverable, and much smaller. But as different as the cars and drivers may seem, this crowd has always been united by its ability to take cars apart and put them back together.
So what happens when the next generation of would-be car enthusiasts can’t take their own cars apart? At least, not without electrocuting themselves on all that computer circuitry?
They evolve. Instead of being mechanically minded, the car enthusiast of the future will need to be tech savvy.
Back in August, the Biden administration announced it’s aim to make half of all new car sales electric by 2030. GM is on board, and is prepared to be fully electric by that year. Even the Mustang is going electric.
Electric cars are amazing. They are beautiful, practical, intuitive, and also fun as hell. Don’t believe us? Watch this. And in case you still don’t take electric cars seriously: it is indisputable that the fastest cars are now electric.
These cars are also becoming more and more autonomous, like the new Escalade. Once the government regulates autonomous cars, it’s possible they will have level two or three autonomy, effectively turning them into mobile living rooms. We predict future car interiors will be more like plane interiors (which we design, by the way).
But electric cars are impossible to fix yourself -- and that’s by design. They are being produced in Silicon Valley by companies like Rivian, Tesla, and Lucid. These new cars are effectively tinker-proof, unless you have a degree in electrical engineering and/or computer programming. Even then, chances are you’ll mess something up.
How will electric cars affect the aftermarket industry?
For now at least, there isn’t a huge market for tinkering with electric cars. You have to be super nerdy or half crazy to succeed...basically, you need to be Doc Brown from Back to the Future. There are a few tinkerers who have managed it with older cars, like this vintage Porsche. But rigging old cars with electricity is a tall order for most.
Without the freedom to tinker with electric vehicles, it’s possible that aftermarket manufacturers may become obsolete. We think it’s more likely that the industry will evolve into something more cosmetic. In the past, it was all about speed, but there is no such thing as “faster” than electric cars like the Rimac Nevera.
What does it all mean?
Techies haven’t really entered car culture yet. But in the future, events like SEMA may be dominated by hipster computer programmers showing off the latest in-car apps.
As for electric cars, there is much to gain, but also something we lose. What sound does a Tesla make in a tunnel? When these cars become the norm, gone will be the days of big, booming echoes. It could be that someday, driving an internal combustion engine will make you look like a Shriner. Let’s hope that’s not the case.
On a more positive note: we gotta keep an eye on what’s next. There’s no need to get too sentimental. It’s encouraging to think that just twenty years ago, many tech jobs didn’t exist. Electric cars may ruin the aftermarket industry, or they may provide more opportunities than we can yet imagine.