The Role of Technology in Automobile Design and Production

This mini-essay is based on work done by the Swedish team in the technology part of the Future of the Automobile Program. This program was initiated by MIT and carried out under the leadership of professors Alan Altshuler and Daniel Roos during the period 1980-84. The automobile is viewed as a product of an industrial system. The evolutionary changes of this system and its major functions of designing and producing an automobile are described. Examples of experimental car design and its role are given. The interplay between increased use of modularization and integration in designs and the change from dedicated mechanization to flexible automation in production is discussed. The concluding chapter briefly treats some Swedish experiments with alternative production systems, which explicitly deal with the social and technical dimensions of the system.