The fantastic future of autonomous cars
Unless you have been living on Mars for the past decade, you have probably heard or read something about autonomous cars. Google has been pioneering this field for quite a while, but several other companies are working hard to bring us self-driving vehicles.
The players in this market include Tesla Motors which already has cars driving around the US with an impressive auto-pilot feature and (probably) Apple. Having to contend with these three companies must be keeping many an auto-industry executive awake at night.
But apart from taking you places without you needing to drive, what is the big deal with autonomous cars? That is the multi-billion dollar question.
The impact of self-driving vehicles could very well be described as earthshaking. Reportedly, on average, a car is in use only for about 5% of the day. Now, suppose that you could call up a car through your mobile phone whenever you needed it and it would arrive in minutes. Oh, wait… You can do that… Depending on where you live you can use Uber or Lyft or any number of similar services that are available today.
Oh, but you don't really like calling up a person that you've never met to pick you up at home? Well, what if when you called up that ride on your mobile phone, a self-driving car matching you current needs showed up in just a couple of minutes? Why would you ever want to have a car of your own in these circumstances?
Apart from people that actually enjoy the experience of driving a high-performance car, there will be very few people that will want to actually own a car.
Now, there is a whole host of implications of the majority of people not owning a car, of cars being self-driven and (most probably) electrically powered…
Let's start by considering the number of cars needed to service the population. If most cars spend 95% of their time parked somewhere it seems like an obvious conclusion that we would need a lot less cars. Perhaps not as few as we might think at first, as by spending most of their time actually moving around, there will probably be much more wear and tear than is the norm with cars that spend most of their time in a parking lot.
So, considering the need to account for higher maintenance, we could hazard a guess that we will need about 25% of the cars that we currently have in use today, to service the same number of people. (I actually believe that it would be less, but I don't want to be too optimistic in my assumptions.)
If we only need 25% as many cars, we would only need 25% as much steel and consequently we would only need 25% as much iron ore as is required for car manufacture. The consequences for the auto-industry will be profound. As will be the consequences for mining and steel production companies.
Of course, if we are not producing as many cars, we don't need as much shipping. If we are not producing as much iron ore and steel, we also do not need as much shipping. The impact for cargo hauling companies will also be profound.
Let's not forget that if we have a dramatic reduction in the number of cars needed to service the population's personal transportation needs, and on top of that most cars are electric, the impact for the oil and gas industry will be… well, at the risk of sounding too repetitive… profound.
All of this industrial and commercial impact will carry deep social consequences on one hand, but will also represent a great advance for the environment and living conditions in large cities on the other. Consider that having a much smaller number of cars in usage, we should have less traffic jams and the amount of pollutants and green house gases released into the atmosphere will be significantly reduced. The daily comute will probably be shorter.
Looking at cars as functional resources that you call up when needed, instead of as a manifestation of personal taste and style should also help drive down the price for all models as their acquisition becomes the province of transportation management companies instead of individuals.
Many might think that we are a long way from seeing any of this happening, but that is where they are mistaken. This is already happening. You can buy a Tesla model S, today, that does a lot of the driving for you and Google's experiment with self-driving cars has already demonstrated the technical feasibility as well as the safety of the cars. Over the next year, federal legislation should be passed to allow the usage of such vehicles throughout the US and that will be that.
Once the genie is out of the bottle, there will no putting it back inside. We will, undoubtedly, see Uber drivers protesting against driverless cars, just as we've seen taxi drivers protesting against Uber, but to no avail. The future is coming and it is moving much faster than most people believe.
Updated: An interesting article on this topic, titled “American cities are no where near ready for self-driving cars”, has been published on Wired. It expores some of the same aspects as well as a couple more I didn’t touch on. Check it out.
