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The End of the Auto Era as We Know It May Be Approaching Faster Than You Think
Bob Lutz is a former vice chairman and head of product development at General Motors. And in this essay for Automotive News, he declares the end of the auto industry as we know it:
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. . . .
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. . . .
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.
Of course don’t forget the second half of the phrase “creative destruction”:
Published in Culture, Economics, TechnologySo 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.
The airbag analogy is quite good. ABS — not so much. I guess the insurance industry initially offered a premium deduction when they were first introduced but revoked it as the data came in. I think the issue was that it made drivers more willing to take risks or at least that it made them more complacent about braking and to reduce their attention. (Anyone know more about this?)
The main thing is that if there aren’t measurable improvements to our safety or lifestyles then we won’t adopt this.
The people who worry about government regarding this are providing a context for developing a filter through which we must pass all ideas for adopting this. We need to stop the stupid things from happening.
This comment worries me somewhat, as I’m not entirely sure what you’re looking up. Drift competitions in general, or did you actually find a driverless car doing it?
No — I just liked this video. Fun stuff to watch.
Not according to my wife.
Burn! Would have been better of you’d said “not according to YOUR wife”.
I was hoping you wouldn’t take it personally.
Maybe safer, but not better off.
Its odd today, that with all the concern over the cost of medical treatments, that their is no concern for the victims of car accidents. If you remember when seat belts became mandatory to wear that medical costs increased because people who would have otherwise died survived. Unfortunately these lucky survivors didn’t walk away from their wreck – Most never walked again. Improving the safety of the car doesnt necessarily improve the outcome of an accident for the passengers in that car.
Have to admire crazy Russians for being crazy Russians:
Jay Leno had a routine about that, I want to say it was about the ’55 roadmaster.
“Steel Dashboard. You got in an accident in this thing, they just hosed it out and sold it to the next guy. [Ambulance Driver]: You can turn off the siren Bob. He was driving a roadmaster.”
This took some real balls…
I mean, this probably really took ’em.
I’ll bet he has back problems for the rest of his life. The interesting thing about being shot out of a cannon is that the acceleration rate of the impulse has to be something that bone and disks and ligaments can handle. This guy should have investigated such things before agreeing to this “experiment.”
The “experiment” terminating as a face plant on a concrete floor was also probably highly unpleasant as well.
Actually, I worked on a jerk-limited control law for orienting satellites with CMGs (Control Moment Gyroscopes) from Sperry. This was done to change the attitude by introducing a very low frequency oscillation (based on the first mode of a solar panel array) and then a reverse jerk of the right duration to actively damp out the oscillation that was introduced.
I love that terminology. Thanks for the link.
The computers “reading” Linked in can seem to take all the data easily to load into their application systems, forcing me to renter data over and over in a way that an actual human being could, you know, just read the darn thing.
And I am being told that thanks to Magical Moore, that soon computers will be able to do all we can and more. Riiight.
The Go playing computer? Can it play Chess too? Can it tie its shoes? Can it walk around a room without bumping into things? Can it sort apples from pears?
Get back to me when we have AI that can duplicate general intelligence.
I, for one, will probably be worse, as I’ll be in my early 70’s then. I may welcome a self-driving car.
Computers aren’t mobile enough for Calvinball. But then, there aren’t any rules, so maybe they don’t have to be.
Hm. Well, I use a map.
This thread is absolutely astounding. 200+ comments on a Peth Post. Is this a first?
That’s loser talk!
Of course Calvinball has rules! They just change every 2 minutes….
No no… That would be too easy!
They’re known to unknowable. As soon as you think you know a rule, its obsolete. So you can only know what where thought to be, not what actually is.
We’re approaching Rumsfeld territory.
Yes but he still wouldn’t lower himself to actually join in and defend his reporting or premise. It’s a wash.
Oh NO! it was the one rule you had to have known about! The fight club rule. Talk about it, and its over!
I’ll guarantee you they are better drivers than I am. Can we have both? People who like to drive can have traditional vehicles, those who would just as soon knit and nap (or, for that matter, are too old or infirm to drive) can have the robot kind?
My husband would have survived the accident that killed him had his cruiser been equipped with a side-impact airbag. Would he have been badly injured? Maybe. Crippled? Maybe. But he would have been able to see his children grow up, maybe meet his grandchildren. Not walking is bad. But it’s better than dead.
My condolences. I didn’t mean to sound callous about such tragedies.