How’s this for perfect timing? It’s the day Iggy Pop is revealed as the new face of Paco Rabanne and I’m on the phone talking to Chris Selwood, the man behind the World Solar Challenge, about bad marketing.
Can elderly Iggy Pop be the new face of anything, even a cobwebby old brand of after-shave? Clearly someone thinks so. Just like someone thought, two years ago, that it would be a great idea to infuse Australia’s venerated biennial rally for solar powered vehicles with some V8 supercar pizzazz.
The result of this stroke of genius was something called the Global Green Challenge, an all-singing, all-dancing festival of fossil fuels that nearly demolished the considerable brand equity accrued over two decades by the solar event on which it was trying to piggyback.
To the consternation of some and the mirth of many, it was won not by a Prius or a squeaky clean Euro-diesel, but by motoring.com.au’s own Joshua Dowling in a 6.2-litre V8 HSV Maloo ute.
There’s no arguing the magnitude of our Josh’s achievement. Over his 3000km ride, he averaged an unfeasible 7.74L/100km – almost 50 per cent below the brute-ute’s official ADR fuel sticker figure. The runner-up came in just under 40 per cent below, while third place came in at 33.5 per cent.
But context is everything here, and many viewed the GGC’s evaluative criteria as little more than a bunch of yeah-buts and waivers designed to sell new green clothes to the emperors of Big Oil.
Even if there are degrees and shades of green, it’s a stretch to grant any such credentials to a 6.2-litre V8 on the basis that it’s greener than itself when driven through a desert very slowly with no air conditioning on. That’s relativity, not relevance.
All of which explains why there was no 2011 Global Green Challenge, and why this year’s World Solar Challenge tiptoed down from Darwin to Adelaide in October almost unnoticed. When organisers from the SA government and associated agencies mooted a GGC-like event for this year called the World Eco Challenge, the manufacturers who’d participated two years ago stayed away in droves. All but one, in fact. More about that later.
“Yeah, I’m still getting hate mail over the whole 2009 thing,” says Chris Selwood, long-time organiser of the World Solar Challenge. “Very nasty stuff from round the world about degrading and compromising the integrity of an environmentally motivated event.”
The last time motoring.com.au talked to Selwood, he proved himself first and foremost an avowed advocate of technologies designed to reduce the environmental impact of motoring. The World Solar Challenge is his baby. So how did he feel about the GGC debacle? Could it be he might even agree with some of the hate mail? “Some may draw such a conclusion,” he smiles. “I, of course, couldn’t possibly comment...”
In marketing parlance, Global Green Challenge 2009 was a fine example of botched brand leveraging. As Selwood describes it, they wanted to give the mainstream industry the chance to benefit from an event that had built up fair brand equity and integrity over the preceding years. “They saw an opportunity to spin that brand value out to the benefit of the internal combustion engine.”
“They”? Let’s go back a bit. It began in the 1990s, when the intellectual property rights for the World Solar Challenge were acquired by the SA government, which handed over promotional duties to SA Tourism. From there, it was flicked over to the experts at the SA Motor Sport Board – the crowd that runs Adelaide’s V8 Clipsal 500. It seemed sensible at the time – the WSC is, after all, a race (of sorts) for motor vehicles (of a sort). Everyone knows that races for motor vehicles are always exciting – they have to be exciting. All the more so given the photo opportunities, what with all that super-telegenic natural outback beauty.
Then, of course, there was the natural green beauty of the event itself, with all those eerie looking mirror-coated scientific test-beds traversing the desert using the cleanest energy known to humankind. And coming at a time when every big carmaker in the world was looking for greenie points anywhere they could snatch them.
The synergies, oh the synergies!
So that was the Board’s schtick: give it the big makeover. Make a big-dollar event out of it, give the big brands the chance to beat their breasts on clean-and-green, and bring a bit of excitement into the geeky solar thing at the same time.
For the increasingly alarmed Selwood, his job became to keep the World Solar Challenge from getting lost like a small child in the middle of a Barnum & Bailey’s extravaganza.
It didn’t help that Selwood himself had provided them with the perfect peg on which to hang the whole thing.
In 2001, he’d expanded the event to include a Demonstration Class, showcasing other green automotive technologies to help boost the relevance of the event as a showcase for the future of motoring and the auto industry. Its prescience was evidenced in the presence of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, lithium-ion powered EVs and other technologies now the subject of everyday motoring journalism. One team picked up an award for a remote diagnostics system that was eventually picked up by BMW. “That was before we’d even invented the word ‘telematics’,” he says. “As far as I know, it remains in BMWs to this day, although it would have evolved a fair bit.”
Selwood invited Greenfleet, a charitable outfit given to emissions reduction, in to manage this part of the event, to help boost its stocks and build profile.
It was this that the Motor Sport Board picked up on. “That’s what gave the Board their leverage,” he says. “They began to insist this be turned into a motor sport event, infused with some V8 culture, with all the excitement that implies. You know – Ford and Holden neck-and-necking it to the line for their green points.”
There were major problems with execution. We can attribute these to several underlying issues. Firstly, it was under-resourced and thought out in haste. “And they were fumbling round in the dark. There’s all sorts of ways of measuring green credentials, but there are no global standards conceived to...” To keep the barbarians out? “Some may perceive things thus. I couldn’t possibly comment.”
He suggests the nearest thing to the kind of standards the industry could do with are evident in the Challenge Bibendum, the multi-faceted event sponsored by Michelin to, in its own words, “...explore the challenges and solutions for sustainable road mobility. It gathers more than five thousand representatives from the industry and business sectors, the scientific community, international and national institutions, NGOs and media.”
Challenge Bibendum is big; it’s well funded and well thought out. The figures coming back from this year’s event in Berlin in May: 300 vehicles; 300 acknowledged experts; 6000 more specialists and decision-makers from 80 countries; 15km of test tracks hosting 17,000km of event driving; 300K square metres of vehicle activity space; a further 60K square metres of exhibition and ancillary space for meetings, eating etc, all reported by 650 journalists from across the world.
“It works so well because it’s invite-only and participants are vetted according to strict criteria developed in-house with a keen eye on sustainability values,” says Selwood. Meaning geeky but worthy elements don’t get swept under red carpets and drowned out by marketing din.
As the racket grew around the GGC, Selwood withdrew from the spotlight to concentrate on saving his baby. “My job became simply to keep it on the radar as a separate but integral part of the whole thing.”
Good thing, too. For the rest, as they might say, is how-not-to history.
When the noise died down, the 2009 organisers reviewed what they’d learnt and concluded that no matter what else went on, the World Solar Challenge needed its own space. Selwood heaved a sigh of relief. He had a couple years to restore the WSC’s stocks. “They put plenty of effort into setting up a similar sort of thing to the Global Green Challenge this year, to be called the World Eco Challenge. It was to run in parallel with the WSC, but the manufacturers were rather shy, perhaps not surprisingly,” Selwood says.
They managed to attract just one works entry, which provides us with a tidy and optimistic coda to our story.
Audi: the fossil fuel orphan of the 2011 World Solar Challenge
Despite the cancellation of the event in the face of universal disinterest among the makers, Audi saw value in going ahead.
“One of the hindrances to such an event is that, frankly, many auto manufacturers shy away from anything that puts their ‘green’ claims under any rigorous, real-world scrutiny,” Selwood says.
That’s why Audi’s idea for a one-off entry came as a surprise. “They wanted to do something off their own bat, so they offered an A1 [the just released 1.6 TDI] and loads of expertise up to develop appropriately objective new fuel consumption and distance measurement methods. It was very useful for us, with an eye to a future event genuinely conducive to the needs of the sustainable motoring industry, media and the motoring public. Of course we said yes.”
Regardless of what had gone on before, it seemed like quite an appropriate way for the company to put the new car to the test, Audi spokeswoman Anna Burgdorf told motoring.com.au. “What better way to show its mettle as a bona fide green vehicle?”
It’s the second time Audi has entered its oilers alongside the solar vehicles for WSC. The first was with the A3 1.9 TDI-E in 2007. Back then it was the same, says Burgdorf. “It seemed a natural way for us to authenticate our claims about our diesel technology’s frugality and cleanliness – of transcending scepticism about the normal manufacturer claims. Back then it wasn’t as stringently adjudicated as it was this time. But it was right for its time.”
The fallout from 2009 added to the challenge in hedging against that scepticism. Every day the fuel consumption measurement method started with a daily top-up of the tank at departure time. This involved three independent verifications of fuel quantities, taking into account the fuel temperature and weight of the distillate in standard containers to compensate for variations in weather and volume differences between individual fuel pumps.
“We knew, too, that we had to run a stock standard car, which we did with two adults aboard. No stripping out stuff we thought redundant to the very specific purpose of this trip. It was all there, right down to the (space saver) spare.”
Burgdorf says the results were encouraging for the way they differed markedly with changes in ambient conditions each day. “It showed the degree to which those things influence the outcomes.”
The scope here was broad, to say the least: By the end of day three, the car had endured big headwinds (day one), bushfires (day two) with torrential rain (pictured) on the final leg from Port Augusta to Adelaide.
The car carried a GPS tracker pinpointing its location every moment of the trip, with a rally GPS system calculating the distance covered to the nearest 10 metres. While officially the World Solar Challenge runs 3028km, the Audi covered 3043.51km, taking in detours to accommodation and fuel stations along the way.
Cruising at an average speed of around 80km/h, the five-speed manual A1 consumed just over 100 litres all up, averaging 3.4 litres/100km (its official combined consumption figure is 3.8litres/100km). At worst, Burgdorf says, it bottomed out at 3.9. “That was the rainy day. The best we managed 3.2. That was our longest day, 600 kilometres. The other days we averaged 400-500km.”
Oh yes – the results
The last day dealt a cruel blow to the solar field, with many of the vehicles left beached under cloud cover that denied them the essential solar recharge. In the end, just seven of 37 entries completed the run. First in was Tokai University’s Tokai Challenger from Japan, taking 32 hours 45 minutes at an average 91.54km/h.
Second was the Dutch Nuon Solar Team’s Nuna6 (33:50, average 88.6km/h), followed by the University of Michigan’s Quantum (35:33, average 84.33km/h).
The ramifications of Audi’s entry extend some way beyond the individual A1’s result. Selwood says it boosts the chances of a future event for other green power technologies to run in parallel with the WSC. “But it will be very different from what we saw two years ago. For a start, it won’t be competing with the solar event for publicity oxygen.”
Indeed, it probably won’t even be in physical proximity to it. “Because if one other thing was clear about the 2009 event, it’s that a drive from Darwin to Adelaide is utterly unsuitable as a test-bed for carbon-constrained urban mobility. All very photogenic, but no point if it’s inappropriate for the purpose.”
There’s plenty left to work on, not least ways of improving Australia’s petroleum refining capacity or working up ways to compensate for its current standard, which is well below European par.
“But at least we’re part way towards a show that will run for the right reasons and in the right ways.”
Further reading:
Global Green Challenge 2009
HSV Maloo leads eco challenge
Global Green Challenge results on hold
Maloo and Carsales win Global Green Challenge
Everyone a winner in Global Green Challenge
ACF uses GGC as platform to demand mandatory fuel efficiency standards
South Korean SUV Shootout
CN Confidential: the Global Green Challenge Edition
No limelight for solar energy
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