Chris Harris on... car companies and the battle between petrol and electric

Car companies have always been a turbulent mix of opinions and projected messages – that’s what makes them such fascinating organisations. But I’ve never before seen them in the state of raw confusion they are now attempting to navigate. Most car companies are now two companies, with one side openly in conflict with the other. They are schizophrenic. You have no idea which personality you will witness from one day to the next.

The two personalities are easily identified. One is the old car company. It trades in oily bits and its balance sheet is logical and it celebrates fun and is proud of its past. The other is the new car company. It trades in electricity – its balance sheet makes no sense because it loses billions of dollars. It doesn’t want to promote concepts of fun. It trades in ‘mobility’ and it is ashamed of its past.

Pity the poor management team that tries to control these two companies that are perceived as being one organisation. Take BMW, in the midst of a huge push to convince that electric cars mustn’t just be hideously ugly – they will be the only way we will survive the apocalypse. At the same time it is posting pictures of its latest M5 CS eviscerating Michelins. And its Classic department is posting endless, glorious images of its petrol burning past. Which one of these is the real BMW? Do the ‘mobility’ lemmings from the electricity department sit opposite the people posting the pictures of the M5 CS and drill them with icy, disapproving looks? Does the person from BMW Classic who seems to find the best vintage sideways footage on Instagram saunter in an hour after everyone else reeking of booze and fags? I’d like to hope so.

Most car companies are now two companies. They are schizophrenic

Car companies are, alongside clothing companies and the broader media world, the ultimate social mirror. The story of the car is the story of society for the past 130 years, and as nations have now begun the arduous process of going back through their actions and codes, it’s only natural that carmakers are doing the same thing. The problem seems to be that when they trawl the archives they find enormous quantities of really cool stuff that people like watching.

The struggles for the electric car are so profound and – to me – insurmountable, that I really can’t see how the new electric company side of each carmaker can be charged with striking out into the future. All of them are trying to find a voice, to create a new image that in some way incorporates their past without opening themselves to accusations of ruining the planet for a century.

And this is perhaps why Tesla is so clean a proposition. Unencumbered by any murky past, it has a technological advantage and can write its own story as time progresses. Volvo appears to have done the clever thing and diverted its future into the Polestar brand. It looks as if the big existing brands waste so much time trying to balance notions of the past and the future that they allow smaller, faster moving organisations to sneak in and steal market share. Not a nice problem to have.