‘Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants,” said Henry Ford in 1909, “so long as it’s black.” Ford’s strategy of standardization and efficiency made a runaway success of the Model T car and built Ford Motor Co. into one of the world’s biggest automakers. But 110 years on, standardization does not make for a successful strategy in the face of emerging transportation technologies.

For one thing, it is unclear where technological progress is headed. Whether it is self-driving or electric cars, fuel-cell-powered vehicles or something else entirely that replaces the polluting combustion engine, no one knows for sure. It’s likewise hard to predict the speed of advancement, such as faster battery charging and longer range of electric cars.

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