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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: 1) by curril on Monday November 13 2017, @10:17PM (1 child)
Odd that I haven't seen comments on how this affects people who turn cars into their own personal spaces. People often turn their cars into an extension of their identity, with bumper stickers and decals on the outside and various accessories on the inside. This is especially true of people who do business out of their vehicle. I can't imagine a plumber loading up a generic pod with tools and equipment, emptying it all out at the customer's house, then when leaving picking up everything and putting it in a new pod.
There's no problem solved by autonomous modules that isn't solved by taxis and buses and they represent a small amount of traffic. I think that there will be demand for self-driving cars that can valet-park themselves and drive themselves to the shop for maintenance as well as drive on the freeway, but I expect people will still want to own their own cars. Autonomous modules might take the place of taxis and some buses but people who can afford to own their own house will probably also want their own car.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @03:45AM
You're wrong.
Autonomous vehicles make timesharing vehicles much more plausible, and cheaper than a taxi. This creates situations that enable people to have much less of a stake in owning a vehicle.