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Bob Lutz, former General Motors Vice Chair, opines:
It saddens me to say it, but we are approaching the end of the automotive era.
The auto industry is on an accelerating change curve. For hundreds of years, the horse was the prime mover of humans and for the past 120 years it has been the automobile.
Now we are approaching the end of the line for the automobile because travel will be in standardized modules.
The end state will be the fully autonomous module with no capability for the driver to exercise command. You will call for it, it will arrive at your location, you'll get in, input your destination and go to the freeway.
...
The vehicles, however, will no longer be driven by humans because in 15 to 20 years — at the latest — human-driven vehicles will be legislated off the highways.The tipping point will come when 20 to 30 percent of vehicles are fully autonomous. Countries will look at the accident statistics and figure out that human drivers are causing 99.9 percent of the accidents.
Is he right? Is the age of the automobile coming to an end?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @04:06PM (3 children)
This guy is spelling out a model that lots of business's are investing in, that really has no hope of implementation. Particularly not in the U.S.
The economic utility of vehicles extends way beyond passenger moving. If you look at all the respective utility provided by a car, vs. the cost of the various other transport systems, the market has ALREADY decided what it want's to look like. We know what the future looks like, because the Germans have already built it.
While U.S. automakers have notoriously tried to dictate the shape of the American transportation market, (gas guzzling land yachts that sell cheap and cost a fortune to maintain in the post market, screwing consumers as much as possible) the market has bankrupted them every time they go down that road.
So no. What this guy is actually saying is: "GM has a future in whiz bang autonomous vehicles, and the Fed will mandate that OUR products are the ones that consumers use!"
But the truth is that GM needs to be broken up. They will not be competitive in emerging automotive markets. The way you know that, is that executives come out and say stupid shit like what this guy just said. Which is like the stupid shit they said before they bought out CARB board members and then went bankrupt. And like Chrysler said before deciding to "weather" the economy car market, and went bankrupt.
When you core product is at the end of the extended part of its life cycle, you have to diversify and look for new products. GM will not survive if it throws all its eggs in the autonomous car market, because that market will still NEVER provide the utility that consumers are actually looking for in a consumer vehicle. Like towing the trailer they now have to live in because some ivy league pimp drove their company into the ground while flogging a line of bullshit.
My guess is the board members are already selling off. And if the SEC isn't at looking at that, they need to be fired. Heads up GM employees, start looking for a new job. Because I don't think the fed is going to bail GM out twice in a decade.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @05:10PM (1 child)
Nice rant but you need to work on the facts:
> We know what the future looks like, because the Germans have already built it.
Not sure what you mean here, but Germany doesn't have anything like our "flyover country" in the middle like the USA, so the needs of the country are quite different.
If you mean "making reliable cars" that must be a joke--the German brands are very high maintenance after a few years in the USA. Better buy a long term warranty if you buy a used Merc/Beemer/Audi. Fairly simple reason, like Japan they have a very stringent used car inspection process that means there are very few older cars on the road in Germany...after a few years their used cars are exported to lower income countries and become a problem for someone else.
> They will not be competitive in emerging automotive markets.
GM is very competitive in China, right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @10:46PM
"Nice rant but you need to work on the facts:"
How about this fact: Population density increases at a faster rate than transportation infrastructure. Which means that it doesn't matter whether you achieve higher unit density on the highways due to AI. The curve will never catch up. Which means that AI will NOT solve congestion problems.
And this other one: Heavy rail is cheaper per pound moved that automobiles are, or will ever be. This is just basic physics. Steel on steel has less friction, and one long skinny thing has better aerodynamics than lots of squat fat things.
And how about this one: Freight makes up a large percentage of consumer goods costs. If the U.S. is going to have a rebirth of domestic manufacturing, we MUST be competitive in heavy transport. Which is to say if that employee wants to keep his job, what he makes has to ship as cheaply as it does in other parts of the world. And that isn't currently so. But further, there have been economics studies commissioned that have said that public transportation is cheaper for the state to manage than highway.
So from a time management perspective, a cost benefit perspective, and from a social welfare perspective, rail beats cars every time, in both the long and short haul. And this has been proven all over the EU.
This is the part where you sock puppet: "Americans like their cars". Of course to prefer something you have to be aware of the attributes of the alternative. And few Americans have ever ridden on a good public transportation system. And then comes the argument where you tell me where AI is better because.... And then try and find any attribute of AI driven cars, that doesn't also apply to a well managed public transportation infrastructure.
And all of that is before we even mention inflation and fuel prices.
"GM is very competitive in China, right now."
Buying American made cars are they? So what your saying is that when GM goes bankrupt in the states, there will still be a vestigial penis of a company flopping about on the other side of the globe. Awesome. Hope their executive staff goes there. In fact they should leave NOW, so that somebody else can come in a figure out how to use GM's PPE in a way that doesn't require it all being sent to auction.
Sorry, but I lost all respect for GM when their union didn't string up their executives by the balls during the bankruptcy. Hell I was ready to send the union a case of beer and some hookers, and maybe even donate to their legal defense fund. But after they bent over and took it in the ass, it was clear there wasn't any need.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2017, @02:43AM
Bob Lutz hasn't been an executive at GM for several years now.
I would say GM has taken another direction. They've put their money on trucks, SUVs, and more recently a bunch of utterly generic crossovers. Sure, they have things like the Volt and Bolt, but their bread and butter is still trucks. The next time gas goes over $4/gallon, we'll be bailing out their failed asses, again.
What GM needs to do is kill off another couple of useless divisions like Buick and GMC* and start focusing on cars that are well designed and fuel efficient and that people would want to buy, instead of yet another stupid CUV.
*Except perhaps the large commercial vehicles that don't have an almost identical Chevy equivalent.