Call 2016 the year of personal mobility. Automakers started injecting that catchphrase into the auto conversation a few years back, when BMW, Ford and others decided to go all-in on the great urban migration and how it is redefining driving around the world.

Excitement and urgency. How do you create that today, when just about everything digital screams "exciting and urgent" but isn't because, just like TV, you can watch it any time.

Ford, which is ponying up - so to speak - $4.5 billion to expand its electric-vehicle and mobility programs, is probably looking to tease out some social and economic trends driving consumer behavior today, tomorrow, and next decade. Ford and everyone else.

I was able to get my hands on a Mini Cooper Hardtop two-door last weekend. I'm not car shopping, right now, but when I drive someone's car, a new car, I pretend I am. I was driving the John Cooper Works factory-customized car, with specialized wheels, paint, spoiler, hand-stitched leather accoutrements, added comfort, all of the infotainment bells and whistles, and a 228hp twin turbo under the hood. It's a sporty car with a lot of kick.

Thomas Paine wrote that government is inherently punitive, a necessary evil consequent to the "inability of moral virtue to govern the world." That comes to mind this week, as the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) meets in Paris. The goal, of questionable achievability, is to keep global warming at two degrees Celsius.