The Doorman Fallacy and The Premium Car Industry
As vehicles converge on the same software, the same autonomy, the same everything, does the industry risk committing the same mistake that hotel consultants have made for decades? And could the premium segment pay the price? Imagine you run a five-star hotel and you’ve brought in consultants to cut costs. After several months, they land on a solution: replace the doormen with automatic sliding doors. The salary saving looks clean on a spreadsheet. The door still opens. Job done.
Behavioural scientist Rory Sutherland calls this the Doorman Fallacy, which is the mistake of defining a role only by its most literal, visible output. A doorman “opens the door,” so he can be replaced. But in automating away the human, you lose everything that can’t be measured: the status signal of being greeted by name, the quiet security of a familiar face, the emotional texture of arrival. The consultant optimised for the quantifiable and discarded everything that made the experience worth paying for.
Is the automotive industry about to make the same mistake at scale? When every vehicle becomes safe, smooth, and autonomous, what are you actually selling?
How the Doorman Fallacy Impacts The Premium Car Sector
Technology is a great equaliser, which is a potential problem for the premium sector. For over a century, the car has been one of the most legible status symbols in existence, whether it is horsepower, design, driving experience, or environmental virtue. Early Tesla ownership signalled a particular kind of person: forward-thinking, tech-literate, willing to bet on the future. The car as an identity artefact has always worked because the differences between vehicles were visible and meaningful.
That era is closing. Last year, BYD began offering its “God’s Eye” advanced driver-assistance system for free — a deliberate move to turn high-level autonomous capability into a commodity. McKinsey projects that 95% of new cars will be connected by 2030, powered by modular architectures and over-the-air updates that make even mid-market vehicles feel sophisticated. Waymo, Zoox, and Mercedes-Benz’s new autonomous service are bringing robotaxi capability to the mass market. The technology that once defined premium is becoming infrastructure.
This creates an uncomfortable paradox. As vehicles become more capable, the prestige of capability erodes. When everyone has the same software stack, the same sensors, the same seamless ride — what exactly is a premium brand selling?
Status Finds a New Address
The answer, we think, lies in the direction the industry is least prepared to look: the human layer.
Today’s premium mobility professional is a fundamentally different figure from the uniformed driver of a decade ago. Part personal assistant, part lifestyle manager, part logistics coordinator — they handle the things that no software stack can anticipate. They know you prefer the left-hand seat. They have the coffee order memorised. They’ve already called ahead to the hotel. They make the moment of arrival feel like it was arranged specifically for you, because it was.
That is the doorman, returned. Not as nostalgia, but as the thing the technology genuinely cannot replicate: personalised recognition, visible care, the unmistakable signal of being known.
“In a world of autonomous everything, the most radical act of luxury may be a person who remembers your name.”
Intentionality Over Accumulation
This is not an argument against technology. The software-defined vehicle offers genuinely transformative capability, always-on connectivity, AI-assisted productivity, and entertainment ecosystems that turn commutes into useful time. These things matter, and premium players should lean into them.
What they shouldn’t do is confuse accumulation with value. Years of loading vehicles with every conceivable digital feature have produced what researchers call “feature fatigue” — the point at which more features stop feeling like luxury and start feeling like noise. The next wave of premium mobility won’t be defined by how many things a vehicle can do, but by how deliberately it does the things that matter to the person inside it.
Fewer features, better chosen. Software that serves the occupant’s context rather than showcasing the platform’s capability. Design that reflects a considered point of view, not a feature checklist.
Ownership as Provocation
There is one further shift worth naming. As mobility migrates toward subscription fleets and robotaxis, private vehicle ownership is quietly becoming something else: a statement. In a world where seamless autonomous transport is widely available, choosing to own a car — and being seen to drive it — starts to carry the weight of a genuine choice. Ferrari’s latest EV, the Luce, is a signal in this direction: a vehicle whose value is precisely its refusal to be convenient, its insistence on the analogue, the deliberate, the personal.
The Doorman Fallacy & SDVs – A Question Worth Sitting With
The premium automotive industry faces a version of the choice that hotels confronted at the door. The technology can perform the visible task. But mobility has never really been about getting from A to B. It has always been about identity, autonomy, the reassuring presence of someone who understands who you are — and the deeply human need to feel that the world has arranged itself, just slightly, around you.
Replace the doorman, and you’ll save the salary. You’ll also lose everything that made the hotel worth staying in.
Connectivity Shaping the Future of Mobility
At Cubic3, we think about how connectivity shapes the future of mobility — not just as infrastructure, but as the foundation on which meaningful, differentiated experiences are built. Because in a software-defined world, the brands that win won’t be the ones with the most features. They’ll be the ones who understand what features are actually for. To see how we can help shape the future of your fleet then contact us online now.
