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posted by martyb on Monday November 13 2017, @11:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-prefer-the-Age-of-Aquarius dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @10:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @10:46PM (#597031)

    "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.