Rethinking Mobility: How Material Rhetoric Can Drive the Future of Transportation
"Uncover how understanding the persuasive power of materials in transportation can transform our approach to mobility, electric vehicles, and the future of how we move."
In an era defined by rapid technological advancements and increasing environmental concerns, the way we approach transportation is ripe for re-evaluation. Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder's 'Communicating Mobility and Technology: A Material Rhetoric for Persuasive Transportation' offers a compelling framework for understanding how the materials themselves—and our interactions with them—shape our perceptions and practices of mobility. This isn't just about building better cars; it's about understanding the deep-seated rhetoric embedded in the vehicles we use and the infrastructure that supports them.
Pflugfelder challenges us to look beyond the surface of transportation and delve into the persuasive nature of the materials that define it. He argues that our understanding of mobility is profoundly influenced not only by the functionality of automobiles but also by the intricate network of human and non-human actors involved. This perspective is particularly relevant as we navigate the transition to electric vehicles and seek more sustainable modes of transportation.
This article will unpack Pflugfelder's key concepts, exploring how a material rhetoric approach can revolutionize the way we design, adopt, and interact with transportation technologies. By understanding the subtle yet powerful ways in which materials persuade us, we can pave the way for a more user-centric and environmentally conscious future of mobility.
The Numbers Behind Modern Mobility
Federal statistics agencies track the scale and health of the U.S. transportation system through a range of indicators covering passenger travel, freight movement, transportation and the economy, safety, energy use, and environmental impacts. Recent federal releases illustrate the volatility of the sector, with May 2026 U.S. airline traffic down 0.7% from the same month a year earlier while North American transborder freight increased 19.9% in June 2026 compared with June 2025. Alongside these operational figures, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics published 2024 State-Level Transportation Public Finance Statistics, and the Federal Transit Administration maintains the National Transit Database, which released 27 database files in July 2026 for detailed analysis of transit data. Together these resources form an evidence base that spans decades, dating to the National Transportation Statistics collection first published in November 1971.
Why Technical Models Fall Short
Transportation planning has long leaned on technical transport models in the development of urban rail infrastructure projects, a reliance examined through the North-South Metro line in Amsterdam and the Parramatta Rail Link in Sydney, where technical approaches proved insufficient for handling social impacts. Scholars argue that such purely technical framings overlook the rhetorical and material dimensions of mobility, which means planning tools often miss how people actually experience and are persuaded by transport systems. One proposed corrective is a kinaesthetic rhetoric, a mode of persuasion sensitive to and developed from the mobile, material context of technologies, as applied to projects ranging from electric taxi cabs to autonomous pod car networks. This body of work suggests that accepted analytical methods, while valuable, are incomplete when they ignore the ontological and ecological dimensions of material life.
Milestones That Shaped the Road
Transport history is marked by foundational inventions, including the wheel around 3500 BCE, sailing vessels, steam engines during the Industrial Revolution, automobiles, and the Wright brothers' airplane. During the Industrial Revolution, paving practices evolved to use soil and stone aggregate known as macadam, laid on embanked roads raised a few centimeters above surrounding terrain so water would drain from the surface. The rise of motor transport accelerated with development beginning in Germany around 1883 and, in the U.S., the production of the first Ford Model T in 1908, which sharply increased demand for improved roads. This historical arc illustrates how the material design of infrastructure has always carried persuasive weight, a theme later examined through exhibits on the history of American ground transportation.
Decoding Kinesthetic Rhetoric: How Movement Persuades Us
Pflugfelder introduces the concept of 'kinesthetic rhetoric,' drawing from the works of Aristotle and Latour to describe it as 'persuasive movement.' This goes beyond the simple act of moving from one place to another; it encompasses the entire network of actors and actants that contribute to our experience of mobility. Imagine the subtle cues from the road, the responsiveness of the vehicle, and the interplay between driver and machine—all of these elements contribute to a persuasive narrative.
- Enhanced User Experience: Designing vehicles that intuitively respond to drivers' movements and senses.
- Improved Safety: Creating infrastructure that subtly guides and directs traffic flow.
- Increased Adoption of New Technologies: Framing new transportation technologies in a way that resonates with users' existing kinesthetic understanding.
New Directions in Material Rhetoric
Recent scholarship in material rhetoric has expanded beyond text to examine how physical objects and spaces participate in persuasion, including work showing how contested monuments materially sustain historical amnesia and systemic injustice in urban space. Researchers are also interrogating the rhetorical strategies behind concepts such as propaganda, bullshit, and legitimate persuasion, and how these can be differentiated. The field has been shaped by theorizing on circulation and new media, including visual rhetoric and digital research methods, which scholars credit with advancing the study of material rhetoric. At the same time, researchers note that interest in narrative transportation has produced fragmented discourse spread across disciplines such as advertising, marketing, communications, psychology, and healthcare.
Where Material Rhetoric Meets Resistance
Critics and commentators caution against overstating the power of material design, pointing to cases where persuasive infrastructure ultimately fails, such as the autonomous, electric pod car network studied as a large case that did not succeed. Scholars also highlight the risk of rhetorical deception in the material world, where an object may look durable and designed to last for decades while its internal components—adhesives, software, non-replaceable batteries—are engineered to fail within a few years, a mechanism tied to built-in obsolescence. The concept of automobility illustrates the depth of the challenge, describing both the specific mobilities afforded by automobile-related technologies and the complex cultural, bodily, and institutional entanglements that make changing mobility systems difficult. Researchers accordingly call for approaches that acknowledge reciprocity and engage wicked problems rather than treating material rhetoric as a simple solution.
Comparing Across Modes and Media
Analyses across transportation systems frequently compare the performance and viability of different modes, with work comparing conventional high-speed railways, maglev, and hyperloop systems appearing in engineering journals alongside studies of dual-gauge railway track behavior. Such comparisons parallel findings in persuasion research, which has examined how the experience of transportation into narrative worlds compares across print and film media. In both domains, the comparison focuses less on any single technology's inherent merit and more on how the material or narrative medium shapes the experience it delivers.
Driving Towards a Sustainable Future
Pflugfelder's 'Communicating Mobility and Technology' offers a valuable lens through which to examine the future of transportation. By recognizing the persuasive power of materials and embracing a user-centered approach, we can pave the way for more sustainable, equitable, and enjoyable modes of mobility. As we continue to innovate and develop new transportation technologies, let us remember that the key to success lies in understanding the profound relationship between humans, materials, and the art of movement.
Synthesizing Persuasion and Proof
At its core, any persuasive argument rests on a debatable claim that must be proven, supported by statements given to back it up, a structure that applies as much to transportation advocacy as to any other argument. Scholars of transportation theory note that before 2000, persuasion research viewed people as either carefully analyzing claims or relying on superficial cues, such as the presence of an expert. Research on narrative transportation measures how stories, rather than rhetorical materials, shift individuals' beliefs and attitudes, because transportation is less likely to occur with purely rhetorical appeals. This synthesis suggests that the most effective mobility messaging combines a clear, debatable claim with an experience capable of carrying audiences into the narrative.
Designing for Resilience and Innovation
Looking ahead, analysts emphasize future-proofing transportation infrastructure by designing for physical resilience, catalyzing innovation, and leveraging technology to improve planning and maintenance, which can extend asset lifespan and contain life-cycle costs. Global authorities note that while the need to move people and goods has been constant, what continually changes are the modes of transportation, with dedicated reports projecting the future forms mobility will take. Across the field, expert outlooks converge on 2025-era shifts reshaping public transportation, including AI-driven logistics, electric vehicles, and autonomous technology. These trends press planners to integrate innovative modes within complex, interdependent networks rather than treating them in isolation.
Wicked Problems Across the System
Transportation systems operate within broader social, economic, and environmental contexts that resist narrow technical fixes, and efforts to reform mobility often intersect with systemic challenges that span infrastructure, equity, and sustainability. Given the inherently interconnected and contested nature of these issues, solutions are likely to require ongoing negotiation among diverse stakeholders rather than a single definitive answer.
Mobility as Persuasion in Daily Life
Pflugfelder's material rhetoric of transportation argues that human and nonhuman networks are persuasive and that technical communication can contribute to more innovative transportation work. He connects rhetoric with actor-network theory and reviews a history of rhetoric as material persuasion, suggesting that transportation can be persuasive for nonhuman as well as human agents. This is developed through a kinaesthetic rhetoric derived from the mobile, material context of technologies, examined across case studies of electric taxi cabs, open-source vehicle projects, and an autonomous electric pod car network. The real-world implication is that the physical infrastructure people move through every day shapes their identities and decisions as much as any explicit argument.