Your Children Will Probably Never Drive a Car

There is no statement on economics in this article since your kids probably won't drive a car because they won't have a reason due to automation.  (RedOrbit:  UC engineer: Many of today’s children won’t learn how to drive)

Speaking with The San Diego Union-Tribune, Henrik Christensen, from the University of California San Diego’s Contextual Robotics Institute, said not only will many of today’s toddlers never manually operate a motor vehicle, automation will also revolutionize the entire idea of car ownership, making driveways and garages obsolete within the next 20 years.

- RO

Those who think we're talking doom and gloom have probably already bailed so we're not going to consider a defense.  The regulars have already seen strong signals of the change away from private transportation and the question isn't whether it will happen but rather how long will it take.  Here at the Rockhouse, we believe it comes much faster than any preparations to receive it, as will happen with just about anything if the government has anything to do with it.

“My own prediction is that kids born today will never get to drive a car. Autonomous, driverless cars are 10, 15 years out,” Christensen said. “All the automotive companies — Daimler, GM, Ford — are saying that within five years they will have autonomous, driverless cars on the road.”

- RO

There's some comedy it since Apple has been a leader in innovative technology but they have been all over the place with a self-driving car and, given Cook's leadership, that's hardly a surprise.  At the rate Cook is going, we expect he will be selling the Greatest Musical Hits of the Nineties from a late-night infomercial any time now.

Ed:  you think Christensen is conservative, don't you?

I sure do.  When society decides it's going to change, it happens at an incredible speed and WWII is an excellent example.  The world went from relative peace to two years later when every country in the world was in the war and the biggest had converted most of their production facilities to making war machines.

Ed:  there's one tiny detail that the world is not at war!

WWII was fought to end a war while ending the time of privately-owned vehicles is to prevent a war from happening, a war which would be fought over resources, etc which is typically why they're fought anyway.

The question of autonomous vehicles isn't simply whether they're safe and we don't care if your Aunt Mildred doesn't think they're safe since she doesn't think anything is safe.  The bigger matter is the radical change which comes to life when your residence doesn't have a garage since there is no car to store.

Usually a garage isn't good for anything except storing the car, storing that long thing you use to trim branches without climbing the tree, and it's a safe place for brown recluse spiders.  If there's no need for a car, all that becomes useable living space and the house which was likely the biggest purchase you ever made becomes a better value.

The radical change is a substantial shift away from consumerism since it's not going to matter to Uber when it obtains its taxi fleet whether any of those vehicles have huge tail fins, lots of chrome, and a sexy smile on the grillwork.  Maybe some of you are familiar with Checker Marathon cabs and the company didn't make anything else.  They were ugly vehicles but they lasted forever and they were perfect as taxi cabs so there were millions of them.

It's not likely these autonomous vehicles will be pretty but we're highly sure they will last much longer than the throwaway products of today.

Ed:  a car isn't even really 'warmed-up' today until it has one hundred thousand miles on it!

It's true many improvements have come to the vehicles but you could have had a Checker Marathon fifty years ago and didn't do it so longevity does not appear to be the primary choice factor.  We also observe cars in that time have come down radically from the grandiose appearance of the fifties and sixties to the time now in which distinguishing four-door passenger cars is almost impossible since most look generally the same.  In achieving greater reliability, vehicle makers have thrown out the extreme designs and gone more toward standardization and that, ask any old timer, is what won WWII.

Note:  I've heard that multiple times about WWII, that standardization is what made the difference since you could take a part from a Jeep and fix a B-17 with it.  I have no idea of the details since it was five years after the war before I ever set foot on the planet but I heard that quite a bit.

The reason for that focus on WWII is the evolution we expect from a shift away from privately-owned vehicles will likely even be more radical than that and the improvement we expect is just as extreme but there's a substantial difference.  WWII was fighting to prevent the world from getting worse whereas converting to autonomous vehicles is to make it better.

Some of the biggest reasons a world of autonomous vehicles is better:

- Safety.  Such vehicles do not get drunk and then try to drive home.

- Economy.  Such vehicles do not supported 'planned obsolescence' since that marketing strategy is the fastest way to lose fleet sales.

- Resources.  The benefit to the world is radical when things aren't being made just to throw them away a short time later.

Ed:  you said we would still have our cars!

I did but I also said that would only be on tracks and it will cost you big bucks to drive on them.  You will be part of an exclusive club at that point and it will be expensive.  They won't let you on the streets since they won't be public anymore since you will interfere with fleet traffic.

Ed:  that's un-American!

Before we can serve up much future, get it straight that jingoism and evolution are mutually-exclusive since one seeks the future and the other tries to prevent it.

Ed:  so we will pay for roads and won't even get to use them?

Here's a tip on that, Dagwood:  you pay for the roads even if you don't have a car.  The roads are necessary for deliveries and we want the deliveries so, yes, we will pay for the roads.

Note:  I'm skipping past the radical changes in the economy which we anticipate and for now will stick with an extension to the current model in which employment taxes pay for everything ... unless they don't, in which case you have poor governance and impoverished people.

Lotho:  you're a fookin' televangelist!

In this context, I'll step right up and own it.  This is the future I see and it's a good one for everyone.  It's cleaner due to fewer cars, it's more fun because much less is wasted on recurring expenses (e.g. replacing cars, fixing them, upgrading them, etc), and we suspect there's a high probability it will be happier.