by Carlos López Galviz
Last year (2024), I found myself joining a visit to the BMW car manufacturing plant in Leipzig, Germany. The central building, including a canteen, shop, and reception centre was designed by the studio of Zaha Hadid, following an international architectural competition launched in 2001. The visit was one of the excursions of the annual conference of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M).
The Car Economy
Since opening in 2005, the BMW Leipzig plant has manufactured more than three million vehicles. Their annual production reached more than 191,000 vehicles in 2021, with a daily output of over 1,000 units by 2024. The tour of the plant gave us a chance to witness the very principles of the mass production line at work, combining manual skill and physical endurance with the automated equipment used to fit specific parts and fixtures into new vehicles. We also saw self-driving cars finding their spots in the 229ha site, slowly and somewhat tentatively, along aisles set up for various purposes. The MINI Countryman is no longer ‘mini’, but a station wagon for the middle-class family weighing 1,430 kg, available from £44k in the UK.
The BMW Leipzig plant employs 5,600 associates. By the end of 2023, BMW employed close to 155,000 people, including across 30 production sites, and sold 2,55 million vehicles.
Car manufacturing has been and continues to be important for several economies in countries around the world, both on the production side (China, Japan, USA, Germany, or South Korea) and in relation to the consumption side which involves sales, repairs, maintenance, insurance, and much more.
Current estimates tell us that China will produce 35 million new vehicles in 2025, having manufactured over 26 million in 2023. The world average number of registered cars per capita in 2025 is 200 cars per 1,000 people. Gibraltar, Guernsey and San Marino count 1,444, 1,356, and 1,300 cars per 1,000 residents each, respectively. Thinking that this trend might change is difficult; yet, thinking hard about alternatives, we must.
Traffic in Towns
In his Preface to the landmark report Traffic in Towns (1963), Geoffrey Crowther summarised succinctly the tensions between the challenges and opportunities that the car posed in postwar Britain:
“We are nourishing a monster of great potential destructiveness. And yet we love him dearly. Regarded as ‘the traffic problem’ the motor car is clearly a menace that can spoil our civilization. But translated into terms of the particular vehicle that stands outside the door, we regard it as one of our most treasured possessions or dearest ambitions, an immense convenience, an expander of the dimensions of life, an instrument of emancipation, a symbol of the modern age.”
Leeds was the large town included in the practical studies of Traffic in Towns also known as the Buchanan report. Of main concern to the authors were the effects that rising car ownership in the mid 20th century would have on towns, big and small, new and old. We have the benefit of hindsight to gauge what these effects were in Leeds, Birmingham, London, Milton Keynes, as well as cities, towns and villages across Britain. History offers valuable lessons to understand how we might think differently about the future of places and journeys in a way that incorporates the insights from past experiences.
The future of cars
Transport and planning policies have reverted to pedestrian streets, shared spaces, encouraging active travel and public transport. This is not to deny the convenience for households of having a car by their door, nor of the important symbols and meanings which the car encapsulates for their owners. It is about recognising that the ‘modern age’ of the 1960s can’t be the modern age of the first quarter of the 21st century, nor should the models we have used to shape transport and mobility be replicated uncritically.
Back at the BMW plant I asked our guide where the company saw itself in 2050 and whether they’d still be manufacturing cars then. The question puzzled them. We can safely assume that millions of cars will continue to leave plants to reach customers around the world. Those cars will employ people and machines and contribute to national economies in a way that will likely be reminiscent of the situation today. But should the aspirations of our own modern age remain tied to owning a car? Should cities continue to reinvent themselves to accommodate a growing number of private vehicles, electric, automated, connected, and otherwise?
INFUZE invites us to think differently about our options; about which values should underpin the kind of change that is inclusive and fair; about different sources of inspiration other than car manufacturing plants.