We in Malta have an exceptional affinity to cars. They mean prestige, affluence and peculiarly, freedom, despite the fact that we cannot drive far or fast, as the ever growing traffic makes sure we will rarely have the opportunity to risk a speeding ticket.

Until recently the aspect of individual freedom when driving a car figured prominently in car adverts. Power, performance and speed featured saliently in promotional material, even for compact and budget cars which were anything but Lamborghinis and Ferraris.

Films about street racers, car chases and motor sport still have pulling power. Although we do have to admit that speed limits, congestion and average traffic speeds lower than 19th century horse-drawn carriages transplant such stories into the realm of fairy tales.

Joys of ultimate freedom are weighed up against the aim of improving public and individual safety, and are found wanting. Every car accident, often involving other cars, cyclists or pedestrians, is one too many. This, and increasing respiratory illnesses causing untimely death, has regu­lators, politicians and insurance firms up in arms, putting ever more stringent restrictions on car makers.

The development clearly points to zero-emission cars that drive themselves. The car industry is facing a future fraught with un­knowns, unaffordable capital needs and a shrinking consumer base that soon may disappear altogether.

Toyota is betting its future on hydrogen. It would guarantee zero emissions from traffic, would de­mand only tentative infrastructure investment and allow for raw material independence. A drawback is hydrogen’s inefficiency as a fuel. In an adapted Otto engine, two-thirds of the energy goes to waste.

Most car makers are convinced they have to go electric, gambling on a battery industry that may well be limited by raw material bottlenecks and capacity constraints in the energy infrastructure: if only 10 per cent of today’s cars were to plug in at peak times, most cities would experience voltage drops usually associated with North Korea.

And if electricity is generated from anything but 100 per cent renewable energy, the CO2 pollution of electrical cars will be as bad if not worse than diesel or petrol cars, as the carbon footprint of making battery-driven vehicles far exceeds that of conventional cars.

All the while, tech companies and new start-ups like Alphabet, Uber and Tesla steal a march on traditional car makers in self-driving technology, which promises to exclude human error on the streets and bring about the redundancy of millions of professional drivers.

Yet all car makers have to come up with a viable plan for how to extend revenue until one day transport will become exclusively a public good. Cars are built safer, more efficient and less polluting every year (if we forget the diesel scandal) demonstrating at the same time the waning importance of human skills when driving. These new cars substitute driving experience with passenger comfort. Not so much Steve McQueen in Bullitt but drifting into 2001 – A Space Odyssey.

I don’t want a car that’s spying on me. Do you?

Luckily, it is mostly drivers who rent or buy cars, not their passengers. One route to secure ongoing profitability is to use modern cars like cell phones: as a never-ending source of freely minable personal data that can be monetised. Think of the endless possibilities of selling drivers’ habits, health or consumer preferences to interested parties, from ads to electorate profiling. A small sensor in the car seat could register weight gains, for instance, which could signal to health insurers an increased risk of obesity-related illnesses: fees would then go up, or coverage refused.

Another possibility is to pitch what is increasingly inevitable as a unique selling point: “The luxury car that shows you have more than money,” as Volvo advertised their cars in the 1980s. The Swedish car maker had always been at the forefront of safety. It was the first to install three-point seat belts, to use laminated security glass, to cushion the dashboard, to reinforce doors against side impact, to install air­bags all over from roof to the knee. It had the first rear-facing child seat, the first blind spot warning system and was the first to introduce impact-reducing crash zones.

Interestingly, Volvo’s im­peccably designed cars were considered to be for drivers. It managed to embody a superior driving experience. To drive a Volvo meant you’re sensible and cerebral, not a sissy.

Until Japan’s car makers squeez­ed the Swedes from their important US market and Ford almost annihilated them when they bought Volvo in 1999 not quite knowing what to do with a stubbornly European firm, beloved but still loss-making.

When the Gothenburg company was acquired by the Chinese car maker Geely nine years ago, I did not place much hope on its future. I could not have been more wrong.

In 2018 the company had the best year in its entire history, selling 642,000 cars, or 12.4 per cent more than in 2017. It signed a cooperation agreement with Uber, which bought 24,000 Volvo XC90s for its autonomous driving programme.

Then Volvo agreed on a joint venture with the Californian computer systems firm Nvidia to develop artificial intelligence-capable, onboard computer systems with unmatched computing power. Volvo introduced a shared mobility scheme, ‘M’, and started to offer ‘Case by Volvo’, a car subscription system including insurance, service, repair, delivery and tyre replacement for a monthly fee. All the while, European designers made sure the cars looked stylish and desirable.

Challenged by tightening European emission standards, Volvo announced that as from this year, every new model will be either electric or a plug-in hybrid. The future looked promising.

Sadly, not for me as a retail investor, I thought to myself.

Volvo is wholly owned by the Geely Holding Group, which other than its Chinese car manufacturer Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd, is not listed either. The only possibi­lity to invest in the champion of safe driving would be to buy one of their medium-term bonds. The €600 bond 2024, which was issued in March, is yielding 2.2 per cent at the time of writing. But then, more announcements followed.

All new models will have a top speed limit of 180kph – again, sensible, if perhaps grating for diehard fans of Top Gear or for speeders on Germany’s limitless motorways.

But this is not where the meddling stopped. Soon all cars will be equipped with AI-supported indoor cameras aimed at the driver. They would recognise if a driver is distracted or intoxicated. In which case the car would be slowed down, parked and immobilised. It is unclear if the computer can check this out by itself like Kubrick’s Hal, or if police, or professional controllers, will sneak in and take over.

The Chinese have ample experience in 24/7 monitoring their 10 million-strong Muslim Uighur population. Every car is a red dot on police monitors. Every mosque visi­tor is filmed, registered and later incriminated. Phone and web-data are filed and profiled. A million Uighurs are in­carcerated in ‘re-education’ camps, children orphaned and people harassed to spy on each other. This is done, in the best intentions, for security’s sake – at least for the security of Han Chinese.

The concept of using our cars for social engineering purposes is troubling. I don’t want to own a car that’s spying on me, no matter for what good cause. Do you? There is an inverse relationship between security and freedom. Absolute security can only be achieved by total elimination of freedom. Did Volvo finally go Chinese?

For drivers, the consequences of an algorithm mistake or any other failure of automated judgment would not be quite as dire as for a Muslim in China. But nevertheless the loss of freedom and privacy this entails is highly disturbing.

As are its security implications. Individuals could be slandered and blackmailed, data falsified and altered. It is not us driving cars anymore, but the car driving us. As long as it wants to!

All this is promoted in the name of safety. But I am certain that once we stop driving ourselves, these cameras will not go away. They’ll make sure we are not enemies of the people, infringers, slackers or dreamers. I am happy I never became a Volvo investor after all.

Andreas Weitzer is an independent journalist based in Malta. He reports on the economy, politics and finance. The purpose of his column is to broaden readers’ general financial knowledge and it should not be interpreted as presenting investment advice or advice on the buying and selling of financial products.

andreas.weitzer@timesofmalta.com