The crisis that the automotive sector is going through is not limited to the energy transition to electric or the growing concern about climate change. It is a sign of a deeper change, an epochal transition involving cultural, social and philosophical priorities. The car, symbol of 20th century modernity, is losing centrality in a society that is no longer defined by physical movement, but by digital connection.

For much of the last century, the automobile was the medium through which progress was narrated: an object that embodied individual freedom, the conquest of space and power over its surroundings. Today, however, the value of movement seems to have shifted to a different plane: the immaterial one, made up of information that travels without requiring physical movement. The modern individual no longer has to move to work, communicate or access culture; it is the world that moves towards him, thanks to digitisation.

From physical mobility to digital mobility

Smart working is the most obvious example of this revolution. During the pandemic, millions of workers discovered the possibility of carrying out their activities without leaving their homes. This change has had a significant impact on mobility patterns: less traffic, less need for vehicles, less centrality of the car in daily life. According to ISFORT data, the kilometres travelled daily by Italians dropped by 37% in 2020. A figure that cannot only be explained by temporary contingencies, but that reveals a deeper transformation.

Cultural enjoyment also reflects this epochal shift. Where once one travelled to visit a museum, attend a theatre performance or browse through a book in a bookshop, today it takes only a few clicks to access virtual exhibitions, streaming films or entire catalogues of literary works. Culture is no longer consumed through travel, but through connection, marginalising physical infrastructures in favour of digital ones.

A philosophical change

The crisis of the automobile, then, is not just economic or technological, but profoundly philosophical. It reflects a change in the very concept of freedom and progress. For decades, freedom meant the possibility of moving everywhere, whereas today it seems to mean the possibility of being everywhere, without moving. The shift from a paradigm based on physical mobility to one centred on digital connection redraws the contours of our age, challenging values and symbols that seemed immovable.

In this context, the automobile finds itself embodying a past that can no longer dialogue with the present. The transition to the electric car, while necessary, is not enough to return it to the centrality it once had. Because what is being transformed is not just the medium, but the very purpose of movement: no longer the conquest of space, but the management of information.

The crisis of the automobile is nothing more than a reflection of a world in which physical movement has lost its primacy. We live in an era in which speed is no longer measured in kilometres, but in megabits, and in which freedom does not consist in being able to move, but in being connected. It is a change that reshapes our relationship with time, space and modernity itself, marking the sunset of a symbol and the dawn of a new paradigm.