‘If you had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.’ Henry Ford
You’ve probably heard the quote many times before - I know I use it often - but according to the Harvard Business Review, there isn’t actually any evidence to suggest the auto pioneer ever said this.
True or not, it suggests that people in the pre-automotive era expected expected transport to evolve gradually from the horse-drawn carts they were familiar with. And by extension that consumers aren't able to verbalise or even imagine their transport needs beyond the one dimension of speed, instead settling on incremental improvements, over innovative and unimaginable leaps.
As a recent visit to a local primary school showed me, when it comes to driverless cars, this lack of imagination simply does not apply to 10- and 11-year-olds. The young people at this particular school don’t want a faster car - they want an animal-car hybrid or a gaming-toilet combo on wheels...