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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: 4, Touché) by stormreaver on Monday November 13 2017, @02:04PM (6 children)
This is an excellent argument for legally mandated autonomous vehicles, and for legislating human drivers off the road.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday November 13 2017, @03:57PM (1 child)
It all depends on whether they have a clear view of an empty road beyond the corner. It's a shame that too few drivers seem to bother to make this distinction.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Monday November 13 2017, @06:04PM
That is entirely irrelevant. There are hundreds of unforeseeable circumstance that make that a very bad idea.
It's a shame that there are still people who think such a distinction matters. People need to get their thrills in ways that don't put others (or their property) at risk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @06:12PM
Autonomous cars can drift really well. A university actually tried it for parallel parking. The car would parallel park facing the opposite direction by drifting into the spot. The rear of the car would swing around, the car would go sort of backwards and sideways while skidding, and finally the car would perfectly slip into the parking spot.
I'd pay for that!
Instead we get cars that drive slower than my grandpa, puttering along below the speed limit and never bending a rule even a tiny bit.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday November 13 2017, @08:13PM (1 child)
When I read this I pictured a track or private property...
It seems a bit unreasonable to force casual racers to have two cars (one for racing and one for regular roads), when they could just have one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @02:58AM
Nobody's forcing you to do that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @08:02PM
and yours is why we need more dead politicians.