Bob Lutz is a former vice chairman and head of product development at General Motors. He also held senior executive positions with Ford, Chrysler, BMW and Opel.
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Bob Lutz: Kiss the good times goodbye
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.
On the freeway, it will merge seamlessly into a stream of other modules traveling at 120, 150 mph. The speed doesn’t matter. You have a blending of rail-type with individual transportation.
Then, as you approach your exit, your module will enter deceleration lanes, exit and go to your final destination. You will be billed for the transportation. You will enter your credit card number or your thumbprint or whatever it will be then. The module will take off and go to its collection point, ready for the next person to call.
Most of these standardized modules will be purchased and owned by the Ubers and Lyfts and God knows what other companies that will enter the transportation business in the future.
A minority of individuals may elect to have personalized modules sitting at home so they can leave their vacation stuff and the kids’ soccer gear in them. They’ll still want that convenience.
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.
Of course, there will be a transition period. Everyone will have five years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap or trade it on a module.
CNBC recently asked me to comment on a study showing that people don’t want to buy an autonomous car because they would be scared of it. They don’t trust traditional automakers, so the only autonomous car they’d buy would have to come from Apple or Google. Only then would they trust it.
My reply was that we don’t need public acceptance of autonomous vehicles at first. All we need is acceptance by the big fleets: Uber, Lyft, FedEx, UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, utility companies, delivery services. Amazon will probably buy a slew of them. These fleet owners will account for several million vehicles a year. Every few months they will order 100,000 low-end modules, 100,000 medium and 100,000 high-end. The low-cost provider that delivers the specification will get the business.
These modules won’t be branded Chevrolet, Ford or Toyota. They’ll be branded Uber or Lyft or who-ever else is competing in the market.
The manufacturers of the modules will be much like Nokia — basically building handsets. But that’s not where the value is going to be in the future. The value is going to be captured by the companies with the fully autonomous fleets.
The end of performance
These transportation companies will be able to order modules of various sizes — short ones, medium ones, long ones, even pickup modules. But the performance will be the same for all because nobody will be passing anybody else on the highway. That is the death knell for companies such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. That kind of performance is not going to count anymore.
In each size vehicle, you will be able to order different equipment levels. There will be basic modules, and there will be luxury modules that will have a refrigerator, a TV and computer terminals with full connectivity. There will be no limit to what you can cram into these things because drinking while driving or texting while driving will no longer be an issue.
The importance of styling will be minimized because the modules in the high-speed trains will have to be blunt at both ends. There will be minimum separation in the train. Air resistance will be minimal because the modules will just be inserted into the train and spat out when you get close to your exit.
The future of dealers?
Unfortunately, I think this is the demise of automotive retailing as we know it.
Think about it: A horse dealer had a stable of horses of all ages, and you would come in and get the horse that suited you. You’d trade in your old horse and take your new horse home.
Car dealers will continue to exist as a fringe business for people who want personalized modules or who buy reproduction vintage Ferraris or reproduction Formula 3 cars. Automotive sport — using the cars for fun — will survive, just not on public highways. It will survive in country clubs such as Monticello in New York and Autobahn in Joliet, Ill. It will be the well-to-do, to the amazement of all their friends, who still know how to drive and who will teach their kids how to drive. It is going to be an elitist thing, though there might be public tracks, like public golf courses, where you sign up for a certain car and you go over and have fun for a few hours.
And like racehorse breeders, there will be manufacturers of race cars and sports cars and off-road vehicles. But it will be a cottage industry.
Yes, there will be dealers for this, but they will be few and far between. People will be unable to drive the car to the dealership, so dealers will probably all be on these motorsports and off-road dude ranches. It is there where people will be able to buy the car, drive it, get it serviced and get it repainted. In the early days, those tracks may be relatively numerous, but they will decline over time.
So auto retailing will be OK for the next 10, maybe 15 years as the auto companies make autonomous vehicles that still carry the manufacturer’s brand and are still on the highway.
But dealerships are ultimately doomed. And I think Automotive News is doomed. Car and Driver is done; Road & Track is done. They are all facing a finite future. They’ll be replaced by a magazine called Battery and Module read by the big fleets.
The era of the human-driven automobile, its repair facilities, its dealerships, the media surrounding it — all will be gone in 20 years.
Today’s automakers?
The companies that can move downstream and get into value creation will do OK. But unless they develop superior technical capability, the manufacturers of the modules, the handset providers, if you will, will have their specifications set by the big transportation companies.
The fleets will say, “We want a module of a certain length, a certain weight and a certain range.”
They will prescribe the mileage and the acceleration and take bids.
Automakers, if they are smart, may be able to adapt. General Motors sees the handwriting on the wall. It has created Maven and has bought into Cruise Automation and Lyft.
It doesn’t want to be the handset provider. It wants to be the company that creates the value and captures the value, and it is making the right moves to be around when the transition occurs.
I think probably everybody sees it coming, but no one wants to talk about it. They know they will be OK for a few years if they keep providing superior technology, superior design and have good software for autonomous driving.
So for a while, the autonomous thing will be captured by the automobile companies. But then it’s going to flip, and the value will be captured by the big fleets.
This transition will be largely complete in 20 years.
I won’t be around to say, “I told you so,” though if I do make it to 105, I could no longer drive anyway because driving will be banned. So my timing once again is impeccable.
86 Comments on "Bob Lutz: Kiss the good times goodbye"
Hello on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 6:58 am
50 years ago it was the flying car thing, now it’s the self driving car.
Why not aim higher? The self-flying car?
AI is tuff. I just played a round of the famous Civilization computer game. The AI in its latest incarnation is not any smarter than it was 30 years ago. That’s because AI is much tougher to do than what the generic news guy and corporate lackey understands it to be.
Shortend on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:03 am
Betcha Amazon will control it all and still lose money and triple its stock price.
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:03 am
Why not aim higher? The self-flying car?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rfe4BFiVNA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRZNLBL7Px4
The AI in its latest incarnation is not any smarter than it was 30 years ago. That’s because AI is much tougher to do than what the generic news guy and corporate lackey understands it to be.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-39888639/how-a-computer-beat-the-best-chess-player-in-the-world
Chess has lost lot of its allure now that a computer will always beat the best human chess player.
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:07 am
Autonomous driving will enable enforcement of uniform speeds, which increases the capacity of a road, without this incessant overtaking.
Driving becomes LESS boring because you can do something else other than staring at the white line at the middle of road, or worse constant stop and go in a traffic jam.
Davy on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:11 am
Autonomous driving is a fake techno optimistic brain fart. This is just another example of fiction parading as fact. They might be able to get this off the drawing board in limited circumstances but it will likely never amount to anything worthy of a transformation. FRAUD
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:23 am
Autonomous driving is a fake techno optimistic brain fart.
No it is not, other than perhaps in your rural backward Missouri:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/intel-in-autonomous-cars/
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/the-world-of-autonomous-e-vehicles-according-to-daimler-and-bosch/
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/daimler-bosch-will-bring-autonomous-car-within-5-years/
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/nissan-leaf-autonomous-drive-demonstration-in-london/
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/09/14/2017-frankfurt-motor-show/
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/by-2030-you-wont-own-a-car/
q on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:25 am
Traveling telephone booths are better, quicker and they can move also in time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAGKNrhhF2s
Davy on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:31 am
words please, your personal web page parading as an empty link is not valid. FRAUD
paulo1 on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:33 am
Good comment, Davy.
I am trying to rationalize this article with my reality and cannot. One of us is living in a dream world, and I know I’m not. Tomorrow is a town day for me with about 6 stops picking up construction supplies and material from various wholesalers. Obviously, this would be impossible in this man’s world, unless of course, we all live in little rabit warren boxes and commute to cubicles in a mega-city with our eyes glued to dumb phones and reading what we are supposed to think and feel.
I submit, where people grow the food, harvest the trees for lumber, mine and process the ore…whatever is required for the hive dwellers to survive, we will still be responsible for our own transportation and life choices.
Lutz sees a world of past popular mechanics flying cars. I see a world that is increasingly difficult to ‘make it’, and those unlucky enough to be stuck in a warren paying off student loans and insane mortgages/rents will be ever increasingly sliding into a gerbil wheel hell. Ultimately, there will be no safe place to drop off passengers in teeming and violent slums….but more importantly, no reason to go there.
Hello on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:38 am
>>>> Chess has lost lot of its allure now that a computer
Chess is a child’s play simple problem of brute-force calculation in a closed and well-defined environment.
The fact that a simple game like chess requires a quasi super-computer to beat a human should give you hint of how challenging AI is.
Self driving cars will have a future in limited applications, closed circuits, or maybe on long-haul travel on well-defined freeways. Self driving cars as described in the article above? I’m willing to bet that this ain’t gonna happen not in 20 years.
Revi on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:46 am
The problem is that the car is still an inefficient use of energy. Why even have cars? You could hook them all together, get in and go to your destination. It would be just like a gigantic bus or heaven forbid, A Train!
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:52 am
Present day driving, mostly commuting, takes place in a typical [one car – one passenger mode]. With IT and location aware smart phones, it is possible to complete your route, while transferring zero or more times, while ensuring that a single vehicle will be filled with passengers. The old car, too intrusive, too privacy challenged, will probably be replaced with a van-solution without benches:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dict8tvR_ZY
And add to that females-only transportation.
The result is that the same transportation effort can be delivered with 5-10 times less vehicles. Adieu traffic congestion.
Additional advantages: no need anymore for private car ownership. That is great news for big cities and all these ugly parked cars.
In the end it is paradoxically bad news for car companies itself that will maneuver itself in a death spiral…
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/by-2030-you-wont-own-a-car/
…because where in the current situation cars stand idly by most of the time, in the autonomous driving situation they will be on the road most of the time. And nobody cares anymore about Mercedes, BMW, Maserati, etc. performance, because the boring state will control how fast you will drive or accelerate.
Happy reading!
WhenTheEagleFlies on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:58 am
Good point, Revi. It always amazes me how the present generation looks down on past generations. Here in Providence the public transportation board has been talking up restarting the trolley system for about 10 years. But guess what? It has to be a different grid with new routes even though the old routes still exist. They just can’t bear to admit that the original trolley system worked well and it was a mistake to dismantle it, thus any NEW trolley system route map HAS to differ from the original.
Hello on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 8:11 am
>>> And nobody cares anymore about Mercedes, BMW, Maserati
So you’re saying we’re 1 step closer to your utopia of blandness? EU mandated standard car module. Painted in choice of EU-grey or EU-white and of course to be PC EU-black.
Wow, how am I looking forward to that.
But on another note:
Why do people care about BMW, Bugatti etc?
It seems to me it has 0 to do with how fast they can get to their destination, but all to do with status, taste, preferences, individualism. Ain’t that right?
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 8:32 am
Why even have cars? You could hook them all together, get in and go to your destination. It would be just like a gigantic bus or heaven forbid, A Train!
A country like Holland has say 300 train stations, but 7 million households and thus 7+ million potential destinations.
I think the opposite could happen: the end of the train!, at least for personal transport, not transport of goods.
Folks who could not afford a private car, were forced to take the train. No more. A new public autonomous driving transport system could become a deadly competitor for the train (I only realize that now, nice blogpost topic).
https://www.zelfrijdendvervoer.nl/mobiliteit/2017/10/10/regering-gaat-zelfrijdende-auto-stimuleren-vanuit-mobiliteitsfonds/
New Dutch government has decided that new roads need to be designed from a perspective of enabling autonomous cars. Furthermore the Dutch government has announced that all existing roads need to be adapted to the coming reality of autonomous driving.
Autonomous driving is a fake techno optimistic brain fart.
Poor Davy, where the rest of the world moves on, Davy is still stuck in his 2010 collapse worldview and is prepping in deep Missouri with goats and all.
#WaitingForGodot
fmr-paultard on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 8:39 am
i’m sadden that supertard in his quest to discredit eurotard has totally rejected technology. this is another failure besides adopting permacultist paradigm then adopting concealment strategy when shopping for industrial ag. products.
But first
FIRST FEMALE IAF PILOT APPOINTED DEPUTY COMMANDER IN COMBAT SQUADRON
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/3b/5d/d7/3b5dd72bbed397d0f53deb9db0913229–christopher-hitchens-atheist-quotes.jpg
Rejecting technology is bill joy and Marshal Joffre stuff.
it’s been good to be away from PO. free from cealess SENTAPBs supremacist extremist nazi antisemitic tard preachers bumpskied propaganda. Islam is also about supremacism but SENTAPBs don’t like it. Not much for free competition of supremacist ideas is it?
fmr-paultard on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 8:46 am
i liked bob in electric car docu. i’m sadden he sold his soul to the techno devil. he should’d stick to Marshal Joffre mindset and walk into the sunset. Bob knows ICE and nothing about technology. Just because I’m for tech doesn’t mean I share a hit of hopium with Bob. Please don’t pass the joint Bob
rockman on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 8:48 am
“The auto industry is on an accelerating change curve.” Silly hype. Perhaps someday will be true but with 84 million ICE’s sold in 2016 compared to 1.5 million EV’s there’s no change in the curve which clearly favors burning more fossil fuels. A change in the trajectory will eventually come…just not yet.
Davy on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 8:54 am
“Poor Davy, where the rest of the world moves on, Davy is still stuck in his 2010 collapse worldview and is prepping in deep Missouri with goats and all.”
Goats are more real than Disney World.
I think the opposite could happen: the end of the train!, at least for personal transport, not transport of goods.”
Techno nonsense. Slow trains with localized communities living seasonally and networked to nature should be the future. Instead we have so many people mesmerized by technology as the world burns.
“New Dutch government has decided that new roads need to be designed from a perspective of enabling autonomous cars. Furthermore the Dutch government has announced that all existing roads need to be adapted to the coming reality of autonomous driving.”
Like I say dumb n dutch
Ghung on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 9:11 am
A hackers dream. They won’t even have to drive the cars and trucks to run everyone down.
Hello on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 9:19 am
>>>> Furthermore the Dutch government has announced that all existing roads need to be adapted
Wow, so they admit that self-driving is a dream with current road setup. Too difficult for AI.
deadlykillerbeaz on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 9:25 am
I like my truck and it always goes a long ways. Just have to have some gas and away you go.
Don’t have to plug in the charger, batteries have trouble in cold weather, lose their charge faster, if you have a problem on the road on a cold day, it could be harrowing. Colder than Hades today out there.
Even George Jetson had a flying car, drove it himself.
A self driving car would be ok if it goes to the grocery store and comes back with groceries. No sense in running that errand if it can be done by the self driving car with software to fill a grocery list.
Besides, vandals will be able to wreak havoc on the roads.
Trains have a beverage and dining car, you can move around, have something to eat and drink. A much better ride for your money.
Who wants to drink alone in a self driving mini millennium falcon?
He may ride forever ‘neath the streets of Boston, he’s the man who never returned
MASTERMIND on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 10:09 am
Uber test drove 44 driverless cars this year and they could only go on average one mile before the driver had to take control again….Dumbshits are centuries away..They just want to pump up their stocks to wall street….it will never happen..
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 10:47 am
>>>> Furthermore the Dutch government has announced that all existing roads need to be adapted
Wow, so they admit that self-driving is a dream with current road setup. Too difficult for AI.
The German consultancy with global reach Roland Berger has published a report about autonomous driving. Here a link a page from where you can download the report:
https://www.rolandberger.com/de/Publications/pub_automotive_disruption_radar.html
Berger comes with a country ranking that says which countries are likely to adopt national autonomous driving first:
1. Netherlands
2. Singapore
3. China (!)
4. Germany
5. UK
6. France
7. India
8. South-Korea
9. USA
10. Japan
bobinget on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 11:07 am
Just wait till you are over 85 and lost your sense of direction, hearing loss, not to mention eyesight.
If you already live in a large urban enviro, good.
What if? What if you don’t? Having self directed
personal transportation offers a higher degree of
independence. Maybe in 20 yrs 95 will be today’s
85.
My wife calls my EV ‘a computer with wheels’.
It has about 17 moving parts.
I intend to still be the eighteenth in ten years.
Hello on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 11:50 am
>>>> likely to adopt national autonomous driving first:
1. Netherlands
You guys suck that bad at driving that you need a computer to help out? 🙂
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 12:53 pm
You guys suck that bad at driving that you need a computer to help out?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
Click on the road fatalities per 100,000 to verify that can’t be an explanation, although I have to admit that it irritates me that we couldn’t manage to stay ahead of the Swiss and were beaten with a homeopathic margin of 3.3 vs 3.4., in contrast to harakiri Japan (4.7) or Wildwest USA (10.6!).
These boring thoughtful risk-avoiding Europeans.lol, with the UK (2.9) leading the pack, if I naughtily may venture to classify our friends from Albion as “Europeans”.
Seriously, the reason why The Netherlands is at the forefront is because the Dutch government smells business opportunities and wants to be first, just like Denmark was first with wind energy and now has robust turbine companies that are worldwide leaders.
dave thompson on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 1:44 pm
You want to see our energy future? Like in the movie “The Graduate” plastics.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/parkersburg-plastic-fire_us_5a00a533e4b0c96530015c73?section=us_green
LetStupidPeopleDie on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 1:47 pm
You can tell by reading Lutz that is not an engineer. This loser probably never changed the oil on his car or had to trouble shoot his car with a oscilloscope. People that don’t build anything or don’t fix anything with their hands have no idea how things can get complicated fast.
Another typical Moron that thinks he is bright for reciting what he read on the main street media.
Apneaman on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 2:36 pm
clog thanks for all those “by 2030” links. In a couple of years they will move the goal posts again just like the 100% renewable dreamers do which is only the electricity, some 20% of total energy demand.
The other great goal post movers are the completely corrupted big enviro NGO’s and government policy law-fish.
None of it is happening or going too. CO2 is the highest it’s been in humans history and the definition of “autonomous” & “AI” are ever changing.
I see no self driving cars. Just hopey hype.
Here’s a couple from Tom Lewis who, as per usual, exposes the hype for what it is.
The “Self-Driving Car” is Only an Oxymoron
“Why? Because it’s the Next Big Thing, that’s why. Billions of dollars are in play.
Which is why we are seeing an avalanche of faux-news stories about the coming era of driverless cars, how they’re on the streets now, how well they are doing in testing, how soon there will be nothing but driverless cars on all our roads. And all this chum in the financial water has served its purposes: the hedge fund sharks, and the Masters of the Universe they serve, are in a feeding frenzy; and the gullible public is giddy with anticipation.”
“Is there such a thing as a “driverless car?” Not yet, there isn’t. The conditions for allowing “driverless cars” on the public roads in a few states unanimously specify that the driverless car has to have a driver who is ready to instantly take control of the vehicle. Moreover, what they are driving and testing are prototypes and jury-rigs; no one has yet built an autonomous vehicle. (Tesla cars offer “auto-pilot,” but it isn’t.)
“So almost all the stories you have read and seen about “driverless cars” on the road are fake (some fastidious journalists write about testing cars that are capable of becoming autonomous, but most people read right through the fastidiousness)”
Driverless in Manhattan: A Comedy
“All the stories were about an announcement from the office of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that a subsidiary of General Motors had applied to begin the first tests in the state of a “fully autonomous vehicle.” Curiously, every story that I have seen said that GM got the contract to do the testing, when all the governor’s announcement said was that they had applied for the contract. But that is far from the only abject failure of “journalism” with respect to this story:
The driverless cars will not be driverless. There will be not only a qualified engineer seated at all times on the driver’s seat, performing on demand the functions of a driver, but in addition there will be a person in the passenger’s seat, performing, as required, the functions of a passenger. This was clearly laid out in the governor’s release.
The autonomous cars will not be autonomous. The governor referred to them as “fully autonomous” cars, but they are not. In the industry, there are four levels of autonomy, and only Level Five cars, which can go anywhere in any weather at any time without human intervention, are properly called fully autonomous. No such car has yet been built, and there is no timetable for when one might be built. What has been achieved is Level Four, a car that can automatically perform certain prescribed tasks within a prescribed area.
The cars will not “roam New York City streets” at will. As the governor’s statement pointed out but few stories mentioned, the tests will take place within a “geofenced area” of about five square miles, the mapping of which, says the governor, “has begun.” Wait, what? There are no existing maps of Manhattan, including Google Maps, that the cars can use? That’s going to be a problem for the rest of the country, right?
The tests will not exactly be “real world.” In addition to the driver hovering over the driverless controls, and the passenger hovering over the driver, each individual car in the test will be escorted by a New York State Police cruiser, and will be under the umbrella of a five million dollar insurance policy. Other than that, though, it’s just another Monday in Manhattan.
Despite all this, driverless cars are a great investment. Consider. A few months before being “selected” by the governor to get the first contract to test autonomous cars in New York, GM gave $17,500 to Cuomo’s reelection campaign. As word spread of GM’s victory in the struggle to dominate a non-existent industry, General Motors stock went up 25%. You just don’t see that kind of return on investment much anymore. Not since Bernie Madoff, anyway.
So now that we know how that works, let us repair once again to the Slough of Despond, there to contemplate our technological future.”
http://www.dailyimpact.net/2017/10/23/driverless-in-manhattan-a-comedy/
clog all you are doing is spreading fake news that helps jack up Bob Lutz’s GM stock.
Bob’s 85 and still shilling strong.
Even if they build a few, they are still not autonomous, because they are DEPENDENT on satellites and an entire techno infrastructure. A human does not need any of that shit to get in a car and drive somewhere.
Oh and there is no AI either except in movies and the minds of fantasists.
Sys1 on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 3:15 pm
I like driving and feel terribly bored when driven by someone else.
Frank the Tank on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 3:46 pm
Has there ever been a less imaginative human being than Bob Lutz?
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 4:12 pm
Even if they build a few, they are still not autonomous, because they are DEPENDENT on satellites and an entire techno infrastructure. A human does not need any of that shit to get in a car and drive somewhere.
Of course he doesn’t, but that is not the point. The point is that the relationship between driving in a vehicle and being the owner of said vehicle is broken, with enormous consequences:
– Driving is now a service and the car fleet becomes part of the public transport system, a public transport system that enables fine-grained door-to-door delivery. Without car ownership.
– Now an occupation rate of 1.25 is standard… in a 5-seater car, a terrible waste of energy. For transport energy cost the difference between 1 or 5 people in a car is minimal.
– With mostly cars/vans on the road (1:4) congestion will be mostly history.
– Cities filled with parked cars are history.
– Remote places will have a new boost because of increased accessibility.
Has there ever been a less imaginative human being than Bob Lutz?
You could start looking on this board. Success guaranteed.
drwater on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 4:34 pm
I think Lutz and Cloggie have some good points. Not sure that cars with drivers will be banned from the freeway – too much loss of freedom. Maybe more separate lanes and roads for autonomous vehicles. Actually I could see that come even sooner – would make it easier for the autonomous vehicle makers.
GregT on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 5:15 pm
If they just made available to the masses whatever it is that Lutz has been smoking, nobody would ever need to go anywhere ever again.
“Take a trip and never leave the farm.”
Besides, instead of moving people back and forth from their “home cubicles” to their “employment cubicles”, why not just plug them in ‘The Matrix’ style?
That would be a far more efficient way of managing the humans.
Davy on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 5:26 pm
We need to think about breaking the link with cars and
discretionary driving not just adapting it with more complexity. If we are going to survive the coming dark times we have to adapt behavior. This means not enhancing the driving experience with gadgets. It means less driving and less expensive unneeded vehicles. The resources used to make vehicles is enormous. The whole idea of this exciting AI vehicle future paints a sad picture of what is ahead. If you are promoting AI cars and think you are green think again. Anything to do with cars is fake green.
makati1 on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 6:17 pm
Autonomous vehicles arr never going to be mainstream. When the insurance companies have to start paying out for the machine caused accidents, it will be ‘game over’. IF they even exist five years from now.
Humans are fallible, but electronics just don’t think. They are ‘programed’ and subject to hacking. That will make them a target for all the tech junkies who like to do that kind of thing.
Not to mention the numbers involved. over 250,000,000 cars on the US roads today would take more than 20 years to replace in a growing economy, ‘IF’ they could be manufactured and sold. The US economy is contracting. Fewer new cars will be bought and older cars will be repaired and kept running until they fall apart.
Another techie dream. Yawn!
makati1 on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 6:31 pm
DEBT is killing the US:
“US Credit Card Debt Rises Above $1 Trillion As Student, Auto Loans Hit All Time High”
“Will Americans Die Young Enough To Save Pension Plans?”
“Stockman Exposes “The Black Swan In Plain Sight” – Debt Out The Wazoo”
“”Homeless Explosion”: Tech Boom, Surging Rents Creating Homeless Crisis On America’s West Coast”
“The Economy Is Okay?! U.S. Retail Store Closings Hit New Record High As West Coast Homelessness Soars”
Slip sliding away….
Davy on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 6:51 pm
you have any links mad kat or are you back to empty title posting when you puke your agenda?
Apneaman on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 6:54 pm
clog, it appears that you are still struggling with the difference between your wishes and the reality of this world.
Over the decades I have read about hundreds of solutions and many of them were doable to varying degrees, but were never backed with policy. Many of them were/are total bullshit and the driver-less car is one of them. Solar and wind are great and especially for less toxic air.
A green washed cancer is still a cancer. Already the toxic tech waste stream is doing serious damage – now scale it up.
green_achers on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:18 pm
We already almost had a revolution and are stuck with the orange lunatic for the next 4 years because the deplorables had to put up with a Negro president. If you think these cousin fuckers out here are going to give up their vehicles because some pointy-headed bureaucrat says it will be cheaper, I’ve got an IPO you will find very interesting.
GregT on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 7:43 pm
“you have any links mad kat”
Try google. All of the links that Makati1 provided can be found on Mises.org, ABC News, The NYT, and your own personal favourite Zerohedge, (among others).
Davy on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 8:05 pm
Duh, widdle, you extremist like to hide your sources that way.
jh wyoming on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 8:08 pm
I’m going to miss the randomness of people driving. Sometimes some fast driver gets a peloton going with 4 or 5 cars slaloming through traffic at speeds in excess of the speed limit by 40 mph. Or the driver in the fast lane going the speed limit based on principle. The drunk weaving hitting the land dividers bumps. The woman who’s life is in disarray screaming and waving her arms at nothing. The guy who has lost his temper in heavy traffic changing lanes and cutting people off. It was all so chaotic until they started this AI in charge of handling the vehicle. I could have been maimed or killed at any moment back in those days and now, we just sit there and look at collectibles on EBAY and maybe bid on something.
Kevin Cobley on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 8:44 pm
If your going to travel on a train, travel on a train.
GregT on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 9:07 pm
“you extremist like to hide your sources that way’
Not hiding anything. Zerohedge, ABC news, the NYT, and Mises.org speak for themselves. Try using Google. Even most grade school children find it to be extremely easy.
JuanP on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 9:40 pm
Cloggie “Driving is now a service and the car fleet becomes part of the public transport system, a public transport system that enables fine-grained door-to-door delivery.”
At the small scale urban organic farm cooperative where I grow food we used to have to deliver to restaurants in person, which took a lot of time every week. Now we just send our orders out using Uber, which frees up time to do more productive stuff. I also know of a bakery that delivers using Uber. These are perfect examples of “fine grained door-to-door delivery. The cars still have a driver, though.
Cloggie on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 9:57 pm
Juan, big companies like Amazon and other package delivery firms are busy with autonomous driving. Without chauffeur this kind of delivery gets very cheap.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/currentaccounts/2017/04/28/amazon-self-driving-vehicles-ups-fedex/#757e94c13661
Deutsche Post will begin next year with 3400 self-build electric StreetScooter vehicles to deliver via autonomous driving!!!
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/10/deutsche-post-dhl-to-deploy-self-driving-delivery-trucks-by-2019/
Most here are so focused on “collapse” that they can’t see reality.
Go Speed Racer on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 10:58 pm
What a mediocre vision of what
Is fun, and interesting.
We drive cars because we like to.
This asinine article and the push
for driverless cars, is a manifestation
of the war on the middle class.
Greedy rich people have so much
money, they don’t know what to
spend it on. The rich are clueless
about reality, think we want driverless
cars when we absolutely do not.
I have no interest in such a boring
vision of the future. Cars are fun
and driving them is fun.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are
boring yucky people who have way
too much money due to a sick and
broken government. Elon and Jeff
can’t find any desirable products to
spend their development money on.
Sissyfuss on Tue, 7th Nov 2017 11:05 pm
Lutz has worked for BMW, Ford, Chrysler, and GM. A car whore extraudinare, a climate change denier and a 1 percenter, ol Bobby is still trying to accumulate more riches in case he CAN take it with him.