You have read the title. Do you think you will still read? car reviews in 10 years? That’s perhaps not surprising to someone who writes and edits car reviews for a living. If the answer is no, I hope I can think of some other form of hiring by the time 2032 begins.
But before I start using TV / VCR fix middle school courses, let’s at least see why I asked the question in the first place. There are really two ways to look at it: the vehicle side and the review side.
From an automotive perspective, if most of the cars out there have self-driving electric truck tires, then who wants to read about those cars for fun? My fridge automatically keeps my beer cold by electricity, but I can tell you for sure that I don’t sit in my morning coffee reading the latest news and reviews. Fridgeblog. In this apocalyptic scenario for car enthusiasm, car reviews would be purely consumer-oriented, like reviews of other consumer goods, with different types of content. content probably falls into the mainstream of early adopters and the mass market more than anything resembling enthusiasm.
Over the last year, however, I’ve seen plenty of signs that the doomsday for this self-propelled electric transport pod is no longer ahead. First and foremost, I think we will see self-driving flying taxis before the mass market, owned by citizens. self-driving car. That is to say, not soon. There are too many technological, psychological, logistical and legal challenges for the foreseeable future.
Then there’s the electrical part of the equation. The most exciting cars I’ve driven in 2021 are, without question, all electric. The Mercedes-Benz EQS, Porsche Taycan GTS and Ford Mustang Mach-E are equally fascinating and wonderful – two descriptions that will make you want to read about them. EVs that I haven’t driven, including Rivian R1TLucid Air, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and That EV6, are the I read it for fun and was eager to give it a try – not just for professional reasons, I have to drive everything, but because I’m legitimately curious and interested as a car enthusiast.
Considering that we are just beginning to transform the industry’s EVs, imagine what that could be 10 years from now? Oh, there will certainly be anonymous transporters, like the gasoline-powered transporters of the past, but I don’t think we’ll be short of great cars.
The “consider” part is the more complicated and problematic factor for people like me. For starters, what exactly is an assessment? Is it just a 1,500-word article, read on a desktop computer, tablet or mobile phone, that more or less matches what has long been established by print magazines? Is it a high-format document made for people researching their next car, most likely integrated in online purchasing platforms? Or, is it a caption on an Instagram photo? Or a video uploaded to YouTube or TikTok by one person as opposed to a publication that many employees?
Just last week, a 45 second video that I shot as an afterthought after taking a photo for Mercedes-AMG SL 55 driving for the first time reached (at the time of this writing) 2.6 million people on Facebook. There are at least 1,100 comments and 36,000 likes. Hi. Just to be clear, I’m not bragging, I’m confused. Never mind the views of the full written review, that’s more impressive any out of hundreds of videos I’ve shot/appeared in three publications and about 12 years. And most of it is produced by a team of talented videographers and editors trained to make everything look professional and great.
Except that doesn’t seem to be what people want on social media. A 45-second vertical video on an old iPhone with ho-hum commentary is good enough, just as quick, ho-hum shots of cars in my driveway can generate more Instagram likes beautiful, professional (ish) photos I shoot with my good camera. If the production value doesn’t seem to matter, if the reader/viewer’s attention span can’t sit still for 1,500 words or 15 minutes, if someone inexperienced with cameras can get the job done What’s the point of hiring all these professionals? It is on this point that a senior editor of another publication recently told me that he thinks our entire automotive media industry is, quite frankly, “broken”.
Now, before I start getting angry messages from my co-workers to “shut up, I have a mortgage”, let me now say that the 45-second vertical video of the rear wheel of the car. one Mercedes not like a car review. That’s what you watch while you wait to order your Starbucks, not like the video of my friend’s puppy walking down the playground slide. It’s about skipping or wasting time for a few seconds, not about actually creating interest or enhancing your knowledge.
I do assuming that people still want to read and watch the actual content, and I don’t think that’s me shouting in the cloud. Books have survived to this day, for good good. I really don’t believe it’s all doom and gloom. However, for the sake of argument, let’s say the longer content is essentially toast, and the money is decided to stop spending all that time and money on traditional car reviews (and people make them) to consistently showcase viral dice content with a non-stop Gatling gun approach of cheap, easy-to-produce code snippets created by anyone.
The problem with that is where those pieces of code live. That is TikTok, Facebook/Instagram, YouTube/Google and any other company that follow is still collecting a lot of money in this case. That could be fine for someone with a camera and microphone talking about an old G Wagen, and even for companies and brands trying to get there. initial has a foothold in the market, but in the long run, no company wants its fortunes to depend too much, if entirely on another.
However, how do you get people to see your content without social media? My mother speak She really only looks at Facebook to see the recipes. When I noticed they only came from a small number of publications (compared to her friend Gary, who has a stand mixer), I asked why she didn’t bookmark the actual websites of those publications. to see their contents? You’re actually supporting them, who produce the content you like, not Facebook. You will also see than cooking recipe. There really isn’t a good answer provided, but in the end it’s very simple: easy and routine.
Those are very difficult things to argue with. So if publications won’t be able to rely on their own websites or apps to make money, if substantial reviews are seen as a bad investment for viral content bombing, and if the taste is real We there’s an inevitable tendency to quickly digested snippets of code, then, yes, it looks like we’re completely engrossed. That the cars we might be talking about are really cool won’t really matter.
Sorry, it’s dark. Okay, I’m looking for a way out. Inevitably, however, I think the answer will probably lie somewhere in between, as it is often the result of a great idea or innovation. We will lose industry players, but we will gain new and/or others. Some things will change, others won’t. However, to get there, people like me need to be open to change and willing to be innovators. We can’t be like our ink-stained predecessors who believed the internet was just a fad. Ultimately, we must remain committed to creating, entertaining, educating, and helping. That’s why I started doing this and why I keep doing it – well, and still playing with cars at 38. You probably won’t read car reviews in 10 years, but if that’s the case, it won’t be because the hard-working and passionate people who create those reviews have stopped today. care.
