With established automakers and ambitious start-ups alike chasing new solutions to safely get people from one point to the next, the lines between those once-distinct industries are blurring.
Expect that to be on full display this week in Detroit.
“There’s an increased focus on the technology going into cars. We saw this happen with the L.A. Auto Show, where there are all these sort of automotive technology press conferences and seminars happening concurrently with the regular automotive reveals,” said Ed Kim, vice president of industry analysis at the consulting firm AutoPacific. “Now we’re seeing Detroit kind of doing a similar thing.”
The North American International Auto Show, which kicks off its three-day media preview today at the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit, still will feature the usual worldwide debuts.
Honda will unveil its new Odyssey minivan, Toyota is bringing a new Camry sedan, and Kia will try to burnish its image with a rear-wheel drive sports car. Lexus will show a new flagship LS luxury sedan.
Other expected debuts include a new Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Terrain, and BMW 5-series.
“All of those vehicles are core vehicles for the different brands,” said Stephanie Brinley, senior analyst for global market research firm IHS Markit. “They meet family needs and really do help communicate what those brands are and have been traditionally strong products. It’s a bit of a meat and potatoes show in that front.”
But also on site will be Waymo, Google’s self-driving car project, which is bringing an autonomous version of Fiat Chrysler Automobile’s Pacifica minivan. General Motors’ urban mobility/?carsharing division Maven is heading a news conference. Techstars Mobility, a Detroit-based incubator for start-up transportation business, also will present.
To facilitate that, the show is launching a tech-focused initiative this year called AutoMobili-D. With 100 speakers and 120 participating companies, show spokesman Max Muncey said the program is the largest single initiative in the show’s 110-year history.
“It’s of extreme importance to the show to be able to add a showcase like this. We talk ‘the stars are the cars’ at the show and we’re on pace again for more than 50 reveals ... but as the industry moves forward the technologies and the smaller companies are playing such a critical role in the vehicle,” Mr. Muncey said.
>But while the official press preview has been expanded to include Sunday — a day that had been the unofficial kickoff of late — all of the scheduled news conferences for automakers themselves have been condensed into Monday. Fewer carmakers are giving traditional news conferences.
Counting Chinese automaker Guangzhou Automobile Co., which does not sell cars in America, there are 14 automotive press events this year. Last year, there were 17. In 2015, there were 22.
Mr. Kim, of AutoPacific, said that makes 2017 one of the lightest Detroit shows in memory, even compared with the bleak recession years when car companies were more worried about keeping their lights on than making a splashy debut.
In part, that may be because there are so many other venues to debut cars.
CES in particular has become the flavor of the day. Last week, Fiat Chrysler debuted its Millennial-focused Portal concept car at CES. While the automaker will have a major presence at the Detroit auto show, it isn’t hosting a traditional news conference. The next-generation Jeep Wrangler, a hotly anticipated vehicle that will be built in Toledo, is not expected to make an appearance in Detroit.
It’s not just CES, though.
Ford Motor Co. made a series of major announcements on its own turf last week, telling workers at its Flat Rock, Mich., plant that it will soon build an all-electric crossover there in addition to launching a dozen other electric vehicles over the next five years. And GM’s Cadillac has elected the annual (and ritzy) Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California to show several of its most recent concept cars.
Analysts and marketers say that’s not necessarily a bad thing — companies have more options to get the eyeballs and news cycle they want. Plus, a more targeted effort can ensure people notice exactly what features the company believes are important.
Even so, Ms. Brinley of IHS Markit noted that the slower pace at the North American International Auto Show this year is more the result of timing than anything else.
“I think it has much more to do with product cadence and industry cycles than it does one auto show over another,” she said.
In other words, there aren’t a lot of totally new vehicles or concepts ready to show off. Coming out of the recession seven years ago, car companies were eager to restart idled programs and had more cash for development. That led to more concepts and a flurry of new vehicles a few years ago. Now the industry is in a more normal cycle and one that just happens to not sync as well with Detroit this year.
David Kanarowski, a senior vice president at Communica who has done extensive automotive marketing, said it’s not a bad thing for companies to skip a news conference if they have no big announcements.
“If there’s nothing new or newsworthy, we actually recommend they don’t have a press conference and wait until they really have something,” Mr. Kanarowski said, noting how difficult it is to stand above the crowd anyway. “What we strive to do for our clients is to come up with a way to say innovation in a fresh way.”
The show is expected to have about 700 vehicles from automakers. And while many automakers have teased what they’re bringing, analysts say it’s possible something unexpected could pop up like Ford’s showstopping GT supercar in 2015.
The Detroit show has traditionally been one of the big auto events in the United States, along with Los Angeles and New York shows, and last year it drew more than 830,000 people over nine days. This year, the show opens to the public on Saturday and will close Jan. 22.
©2017 The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
