Some gadgets in the arsenals of today’s automotive designers and engineers will not befit the Lebanese market. Take for example one device that aims to improve the road safety of the new Citroen models C4 and C5, which had their world premiere this autumn at the Mondiale de Automobile in Paris and will be debuting next month in Beirut.
The cars have a system capable of monitoring lane-separating guidance lines on the road. Infrared sensors under the car trace these lines and trigger an alarm if the driver leaves his lane at a speed of more than 80km/h without setting a direction light. An alarm hits daydreaming/sleepy drivers in form of vibrations in his car seat, shaking them to attention where they might feel it most, although waggish motoring journalists immediately ventured that some drivers might now cruise in deliberate serpentine patterns along the highways, so as to enjoy a massage to their bottoms.
While Citroen’s new optional lane-crossing alert might not make it anywhere into the catalogue of standard equipment required by safety codes, investment into the system would definitely be wasted on Lebanese roads. Apart from reasons rooted in driving habits here, road conditions – beginning with uneven lane markings – simply wouldn’t be suitable.
This puts the device in the same league as some of the proximity alarms in big luxury cars, through which manufacturers wanted to protect their clientele from the experience of denting their fenders when scraping too close to other cars. In wheel-to-wheel Beirut traffic, some drivers had their alarm beep every second minute of normal maneuvering.
The serious reality underlying such amusing discrepancies between international and local driving cultures is that the global car industry is today dealing with issues that sometimes seem light years apart from the awareness of a market like Lebanon whose annual adoption of new vehicles would even in ideal scenarios be a split atom compared to current worldwide output of 60 million cars. But for having any chance to integrate this country into the much-discussed future of the automobile, the policy makers, auto importers and consumers of Lebanon must stay in touch and often catch up with these developments.
It starts with the industry’s fundamental economic and operational concerns. The big car producers today encounter decreasing demand growth in their European, American and Japanese markets. Their mega-plants with daily output capacities of 700 or more vehicles per day are regarded increasingly as inflexible and past their prime and are challenged by leaner competitors with more modern plants and/or lower labor costs. As the most recent capacity reduction plans and intense disputes between labor and management in the European General Motors factories illustrated ever so clearly, these problems greatly burden manufacturers as well as society at large and put planning abilities of industry strategists to the test.
Analysts specialized on the automotive industry have suggested recently that the next big thing in car manufacturing will be in sourcing components globally from low-wage manufacturing locations and decentralized production of built-to-order vehicles in small factories very close to their markets. Studies indicated furthermore that the road to new profits for an automotive brand in a decade or so could be to turn itself into a mobility provider, a company that satisfies driving needs through not only in producing cars but employs a business model to maintain ownership of the vehicles and lease them to customers in several cycles. This would allow producers to realize their profits throughout the entire life of the vehicle from provision of financing and insurance services, along with revenue from after-sales maintenance and repairs.
Killing us softly
Could such fundamental changes in the auto industry be harnessed to the advantage of Lebanon? It may be a daring thought, even though the impact of such eminent changes in manufacturing and brand management on the local auto sector appears undeniable. However, in the car industry and among public sector planners here, only a rather limited number of forward-thinking minds seem today concerned with the evolution of mass mobility and long-term issues.
Besides automotive manufacturing and economics, these vital questions also regard technological changes mandated by the negative aspects of the century-old gasoline burning combustion engine. The depletion of fossil fuels – a concern exacerbated by growing demand for cars in new markets such as China, where sales of locally produced cars reached 1.51 million units in the first eight months of 2004 – is bound to resurge as the auto’s global economic bogeyman, illuminated scarily by projections of ever-rising oil prices.
Energy consumption and the health and climatic impact associated with the automobile are issues that societies ignore only at their own peril. Commitments to pollution avoidance, energy conservation and environmental care are understood today as guiding necessities for the survival of the global automotive culture. These commitments have already resulted in massive improvements in lowering fuel consumption and reducing harmful emissions, but they also require responsible decision making from national levels.
In these regards, Lebanon has a colossal untapped potential for improvements through policy making. Current taxation of motor vehicles is heaviest on new and most lenient on technically obsolete cars. As such, the policy incorporates a certain component of social concern for transportation needs of lower earners but runs very much counter to all ambitions of making traffic safer and cleaner.
If Lebanese lawmakers could envision a tax model capable of encouraging citizens to scrap over-aged cars and acquire new, energy-efficient ones – for example by allowing a limited-time transfer of the tax rate due on a very old car if it is replaced with a new, efficient model – they could create incentives for rejuvenating the national car stock with positive impulses for national health, safety and economy. Action is also mandated urgently in respect to controls of pollution levels and creation of mechanisms enabling authorities to interfere when public health is endangered. By not addressing issues such as the need to halt traffic during pollution emergencies, legislators here further widen the distance between the global and local automotive cultures.
Positive signs of assimilation of the Lebanese driving standards into global best practices came this year through the progressing implementation of the mandatory car insurance requirements and road worthiness inspections or mecanique. On the insurance front, the numbers of vehicles with third-party-liability insurance is increasing for both, bodily injury and material damage covers. This is thanks to the fact that well reputed insurers offer the bodily injury policy only in conjunction with a policy on material damage.
The combining of the two covers offers insurers a better chance for keeping their motor portfolios viable and enlarges the range of protection for society. Such policies are available at $100 to $120 from leading providers. This, insiders point, is still a bargain price and would probably need to increase by 50% to make the business of TPL motor insurance profitable for sector companies.
The process of having motor vehicles undergo a technical inspection before issuing them with Mecanique stickers, in force since the beginning of the year, is also moving towards becoming a fixture in local driving culture. According to Amjad Hamzeh, claims manager and administrator at the Hadath inspection station, the facility processes about 2,500 cars per day, or half its technical capacity. Inspections involve a checklist of 156 points with direct impact on road worthiness, Hamzeh said, which are completed in about 20 minutes of checking per vehicle. The Hadath facility is the largest of four inspection stations in Lebanon, which are staffed with a total of 300 personnel.
At present, the number of cars failing to pass the unfamiliar test on the first attempt is relatively high, at 50%, but the inspectors anticipate those figures to drop in the future as drivers get more alert to the preparations they need to make for the new mecanique. Most defects are minor, with problems like malfunctioning headlights, direction signals or seatbelts, Hamzeh noted, and can be fixed easily.
The number one cause for sending drivers back is not even technical and stems from discrepancies between the vehicle chassis number and the number recorded in the car registration. The manager advised that drivers should check their headlights, seatbelts and especially compare the chassis numbers of the vehicles to their registration papers, to avoid having to re-visit.
While he acknowledged that the stations had been confronted with complaints and had to battle various ways of attempting to bypass the inspection procedure, Hamzeh emphasized that controls against abuse were in place and functioning. The inspectors had heard about alleged dangerous practices of exchanging faulty parts only temporarily for the mecanique visits but never encountered evidence, he said and warned, “People should not trust third parties who take their money under the pretense that they could make their cars pass the mecanique without testing. That doesn’t work.”
There are many more aspects to modern mobility-driven civilization. A bit more to the sidelines of the issue of a better driving culture is the concept of keeping cars shining way beyond their age. A new local franchise enterprise scheduled to open at the end of this month has set its mind to do exactly this and create the Lebanese market for car detailing as well as protection of interior and bodywork.
Businessmen Walid Yazbeck and Simon Barakat acquired the franchise of internationally leading automotive services firm, Ziebart. They invested sizeable amounts into building a modern facility on the northern entrance of Beirut where cars can receive a fundamental cleaning and polish plus protection against stains on the upholstery, fading dashboards, and minor exterior dents. With a range of service packages priced from $90 to over $300, the company aspires to triple their expected initial turnover within five to six years, even as the entrepreneurs assume that they have to raise their clientele from a currently very low level of awareness. “The market needs to be educated and expanded,” Yazbeck said. “We will create the need.”
This leaves the thorny issue of driving mores and attitudes. The way in which this society looks at the car betrays a mixture of three widespread attitudes: infatuation with a symbol of alleged potency or attractiveness; use of the vehicle as a handy outlet for frustrations; and informality of road etiquette.
All this isolates the Lebanese from the cutting edge in automotive culture. Whether sitting behind the wheel, co-driving or discussing it over a cup of coffee, many Lebanese readily concur that this country is rife with lousy driving – and seem frighteningly content to do nothing about it. But if Lebanese living abroad can function well in their adopted automotive environments (and are dismayed over the road behavior they witness when visiting home) and if an up-and-coming Brazilian race car driver by name of Anthony Kanaan can win the US IndyCar Series this year as the first pilot to complete all 3304 laps of the races – then at least the problem does not seem to be genetic.
