73 Mind-Blowing Implications of Driverless Cars and Trucks
I
originally wrote and published a version of this article in September
2016. Since then, quite a bit has happened, further cementing my view
that these changes are coming and that the implications will be even
more substantial. I decided it was time to update this article with some
additional ideas and a few changes.
As
I write this, Uber just announced that it just ordered 24,000
self-driving Volvos. Tesla just released an electric, long-haul tractor
trailer with extraordinary technical specs (range, performance) and
self-driving capabilities (UPS just preordered 125!).
And, Tesla just announced what will probably be the quickest production
car ever made — perhaps the fastest. It will go zero to sixty in about
the time it takes you to read zero to sixty. And, of course, it will be
able to drive itself. The future is quickly becoming now. Google just ordered thousands of Chryslers for its self-driving fleet (that are already on the roads in AZ).
In September of 2016, Uber had just rolled out its first self-driving taxis in Pittsburgh, Tesla and Mercedes were rolling out limited self-driving capabilities and cities around the world were negotiating with companies who want to bring self-driving cars and trucks
to their cities. Since then, all of the major car companies have
announced significant steps towards mostly or entirely electric
vehicles, more investments have been made in autonomous vehicles,
driverless trucks now seem to be leading rather than following in terms
of the first large scale implementations and there’ve been a few more
incidents (i.e. accidents).
I
believe that the timeframe for significant adoption of this technology
has shrunk in the past year as technology has gotten better faster and
as the trucking industry has increased its level of interest and
investment.
I believe that my daughter, who is now just over 1 years old, will never have to learn to drive or own a car.
The impact of driverless vehicles will be profound and impact almost every part of our lives.
Below
are my updated thoughts about what a driverless future will be like.
Some of these updates are from feedback to my original article (thanks
to those who contributed!!!), some are based on technology advances in
the past year and others are just my own speculations.
What could happen when cars and trucks drive themselves?
1.
People won’t own their own cars. Transport will be delivered as a
service from companies who own fleets of self-driving vehicles. There
are so many technical, economic, safety advantages to the
transportation-as-a-service that this change may come much faster than
most people expect. Owning a vehicle as an individual will become a
novelty for collectors and maybe competitive racers.
2. Software/technology
companies will own more of the world’s economy as companies like Uber,
Google and Amazon turn transportation into a pay-as-you-go service.
Software will indeed eat this world. Over time, they’ll own so much data
about people, patterns, routes and obstacles that new entrants will
have huge barriers to enter the market
3. Without
government intervention (or some sort of organized movement), there
will be a tremendous transfer of wealth to a very small number of people
who own the software, battery/power manufacturing, vehicle servicing
and charging/power generation/maintenance infrastructure. There
will be massive consolidation of companies serving these markets as
scale and efficiency will become even more valuable. Cars (perhaps
they’ll be renamed with some sort-of-clever acronym) will become like
the routers that run the Internet — most consumers won’t know or care
who made them or who owns them.
4.
Vehicle designs will change radically — vehicles won’t need to
withstand crashes in the same way, all vehicles will be electric
(self-driving + software + service providers = all electric). They may
look different, come in very different shapes and sizes, maybe attach to
each other in some situations. There will likely be many significant
innovations in materials used for vehicle construction — for example,
tires and brakes will be re-optimized with very different assumptions,
especially around variability of loads and much more controlled
environments. The bodies will likely be primarily made of composites
(like carbon fiber and fiberglass) and 3D printed. Electric vehicles
with no driver controls will require 1/10th or fewer the number of parts
(perhaps even 1/100th) and thus will be quicker to produce and require
much less labor. There may even be designs with almost no moving parts
(other than wheels and motors, obviously).
5.
Vehicles will mostly swap batteries rather than serve as the host of
battery charging. Batteries will be charged in distributed and highly
optimized centers — likely owned by the same company as the vehicles or
another national vendor. There may be some entrepreneurial opportunity
and a marketplace for battery charging and swapping, but this industry
will likely be consolidated quickly. The batteries will be exchanged
without human intervention — likely in a carwash-like drive thru
6.
Vehicles (being electric) will be able to provide portable power for a
variety of purposes (which will also be sold as a
service) — construction job sites (why use generators), disaster/power
failures, events, etc. They may even temporarily or permanently replace
power distribution networks (i.e. power lines) for remote
locations — imagine a distributed power generation network with
autonomous vehicles providing “last mile” services to some locations
7.
Driver’s licenses will slowly go away as will the Department of Motor
Vehicles in most states. Other forms of ID may emerge as people no
longer carry driver’s licenses. This will probably correspond with the
inevitable digitization of all personal identification — via prints,
retina scans or other biometric scanning
8.
There won’t be any parking lots or parking spaces on roads or in
buildings. Garages will be repurposed — maybe as mini loading docks for
people and deliveries. Aesthetics of homes and commercial buildings will
change as parking lots and spaces go away. There will be a multi-year
boom in landscaping and basement and garage conversions as these spaces
become available
9.
Traffic policing will become redundant. Police transport will also
likely change quite a bit. Unmanned police vehicles may become more
common and police officers may use commercial transportation to move
around routinely. This may dramatically change the nature of policing,
with newfound resources from the lack of traffic policing and
dramatically less time spent moving around
10.
There will be no more local mechanics, car dealers, consumer car
washes, auto parts stores or gas stations. Towns that have been built
around major thoroughfares will change or fade
11. The auto insurance industry as we know it will go away (as will the significant investing power of the major players of this industry).
Most car companies will go out of business, as will most of their
enormous supplier networks. There will be many fewer net vehicles on the
road (maybe 1/10th, perhaps even less) that are also more durable, made
of fewer parts and much more commoditized
12.
Traffic lights and signs will become obsolete. Vehicles may not even
have headlights as infrared and radar take the place of the human light
spectrum. The relationship between pedestrians (and bicycles) and cars
and trucks will likely change dramatically. Some will come in the form
of cultural and behavioral changes as people travel in groups more
regularly and walking or cycling becomes practical in places where it
isn’t today
13.
Multi-modal transportation will become a more integrated and normal
part of our ways of moving around. In other words, we’ll often take one
type of vehicle to another, especially when traveling longer distances.
With coordination and integration, the elimination of parking and more
deterministic patterns, it will become ever-more efficient to combine
modes of transport
14. The power grid will change. Power stations via alternative power sources will become more competitive and local. Consumers
and small businesses with solar panels, small scale tidal or wave power
generators, windmills and other local power generation will be able to
sell KiloWattHours to the companies who own the vehicles. This
will change “net metering” rules and possibly upset the overall power
delivery model. It might even be the beginning of truly distributed
power creation and transport. There will likely be a significant boom in
innovation in power production and delivery models. Over time,
ownership of these services will probably be consolidated across a very
small number of companies
15. Traditional
petroleum products (and other fossil fuels) will become much less
valuable as electric cars replace fuel powered vehicles and as
alternative energy sources become more viable with portability of power
(transmission and conversion eat tons of power). There
are many geopolitical implications to this possible shift. As
implications of climate change become ever-clearer and present, these
trends will likely accelerate. Petroleum
will continue to be valuable for making plastics and other derived
materials, but will not be burned for energy at any scale. Many
companies, oil-rich countries and investors have already begun
accommodating for these changes
16.
Entertainment funding will change as the auto industry’s ad spending
goes away. Think about how many ads you see or hear about cars, car
financing, car insurance, car accessories and car dealers. There are
likely to be many other structural and cultural changes that come from
the dramatic changes to the transportation industry. We’ll stop saying
“shift into high gear” and other driving-related colloquialisms as the
references will be lost on future generations
17. The
recent corporate tax rate reductions in the “..Act to Provide for
Reconciliation Pursuant to Titles II and V of the Concurrent Resolution
on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2018” will accelerate investments in
automation including self-driving vehicles and other forms of
transportation automation. Flush with new cash and incentives to invest
capital soon, many businesses will invest in technology and solutions
that reduce their labor costs.
18.
The car financing industry will go away, as will the newly huge
derivative market for packaged sub-prime auto loans which will likely
itself cause a version of the 2008–2009 financial crisis as it blows up.
19.
Increases in unemployment, increased student loan, vehicle and other
debt defaults could quickly spiral into a full depression. The world
that emerges on the other side will likely have even more dramatic
income and wealth stratification as entry level jobs related to
transportation and the entire supply chain of the existing
transportation system go away. The convergence of this with
hyper-automation in production and service delivery (AI, robotics,
low-cost computing, business consolidation, etc) may permanently change
how societies are organized and how people spend their time
20.
There will be many new innovations in luggage and bags as people no
longer keep stuff in cars and loading and unloading packages from
vehicles becomes much more automated. The traditional trunk size and
shape will change. Trailers or other similar detachable devices will
become much more commonplace to add storage space to vehicles. Many
additional on demand services will become available as transportation
for goods and services becomes more ubiquitous and cheaper. Imagine
being able to design, 3D print and put on an outfit as you travel to a
party or the office (if you’re still going to an office)…
21.
Consumers will have more money as transportation (a major cost,
especially for lower income people and families) gets much cheaper and
ubiquitous — though this may be offset by dramatic reductions in
employment as technology changes many times faster than people’s ability
to adapt to new types of work
22.
Demand for taxi and truck drivers will go down, eventually to zero.
Someone born today might not understand what a truck driver is or even
understand why someone would do that job — much like people born in the
last 30 years don’t understand how someone could be employed as a
switchboard operator
23. The
politics will get ugly as lobbyists for the auto and oil industries
unsuccessfully try to stop the driverless car. They’ll get even uglier
as the federal government deals with assuming huge pension obligations
and other legacy costs associated with the auto industry. My
guess is that these pension obgligations won’t ultimately be honored and
certain communities will be devastated. The same may be true of
pollution clean-up efforts around the factories and chemical plants that
were once major components of the vehicle supply chain
24. The
new players in vehicle design and manufacturing will be a mix of
companies like Uber, Google and Amazon and companies you don’t yet know.
There will probably be 2 or 3 major players who control >80% of the
customer-facing transportation market. There may become API-like access
to these networks for smaller players — much like app marketplaces for
iPhone and Android. However, the majority of the revenue will flow to a
few large players as it does today to Apple and Google for smartphones
25.
Supply chains will be disrupted as shipping changes. Algorithms will
allow trucks to be fuller. Excess (latent) capacity will be priced
cheaper. New middlemen and warehousing models will emerge. As shipping
gets cheaper, faster and generally easier, retail storefronts will
continue to lose footing in the marketplace.
26.
The role of malls and other shopping areas will continue to shift — to
be replaced by places people go for services, not products. There will
be virtually no face to face purchases of physical goods.
27.
Amazon and/or a few other large players will put Fedex, UPS and USPS
out of business as their transportation network becomes orders of
magnitude more cost efficient than existing models — largely from a lack
of legacy costs like pensions, higher union labor costs and regulations
(especially USPS) that won’t keep up with the pace of technology
change. 3D printing will also contribute to this as many day-to-day
products are printed at home rather than purchased.
28.
The same vehicles will often transport people and goods as algorithms
optimize all routes. And, off-peak utilization will allow for other very
inexpensive delivery options. In other words, packages will be
increasingly delivered at night. Add autonomous drone aircraft to this
mix and there’ll be very little reason to believe that traditional
carriers (Fedex, USPS, UPS, etc) will survive at all.
29.
Roads will be much emptier and smaller (over time) as self-driving cars
need much less space between them (a major cause of traffic today),
people will share vehicles more than today (carpooling), traffic flow
will be better regulated and algorithmic timing (i.e. leave at 10 versus
9:30) will optimize infrastructure utilization. Roads will also likely
be smoother and turns optimally banked for passenger comfort. High speed
underground and above ground tunnels (maybe integrating hyperloop
technology or this novel magnetic track solution) will become the high speed network for long haul travel.
30.
Short hop domestic air travel may be largely displaced by multi-modal
travel in autonomous vehicles. This may be countered by the advent of
lower cost, more automated air travel. This too may become part of integrated, multi-modal transportation.
31.
Roads will wear out much more slowly with fewer vehicle miles, lighter
vehicles (with less safety requirements). New road materials will be
developed that drain better, last longer and are more environmentally
friendly. These materials might even be power generating (solar or
reclamation from vehicle kinetic energy). At the extreme, they may even
be replaced by radically different designs — tunnels, magnetic tracks,
other hyper-optimized materials
32.
Premium vehicle services will have more compartmentalized privacy, more
comfort, good business features (quiet, wifi, bluetooth for each
passenger, etc), massage services and beds for sleeping. They may also
allow for meaningful in-transit real and virtual meetings. This will
also likely include aromatherapy, many versions of in-vehicle
entertainment systems and even virtual passengers to keep you company.
33.
Exhilaration and emotion will almost entirely leave transportation.
People won’t brag about how nice, fast, comfortable their cars are.
Speed will be measured by times between end points, not acceleration,
handling or top speed.
34.
Cities will become much more dense as fewer roads and vehicles will be
needed and transport will be cheaper and more available. The “walkable
city” will continue to be more desirable as walking and biking become
easier and more commonplace. When costs and timeframes of transit
change, so will the dynamics of who lives and works where.
35.
People will know when they leave, when they’ll get where they’re going.
There will be few excuses for being late. We will be able to leave
later and cram more into a day. We’ll also be able to better track kids,
spouses, employees and so forth. We’ll be able to know exactly when
someone will arrive and when someone needs to leave to be somewhere at a
particular time.
36.
There will be no more DUI/OUI offenses. Restaurants and bars will sell
more alcohol. People will consume more as they no longer need to
consider how to get home and will be able to consume inside vehicles
37.
We’ll have less privacy as interior cameras and usage logs will track
when and where we go and have gone. Exterior cameras will also probably
record surroundings, including people. This may have a positive impact
on crime, but will open up many complex privacy issues and likely many
lawsuits. Some people may find clever ways to game the system — with
physical and digital disguises and spoofing.
38.
Many lawyers will lose sources of revenue — traffic offenses, crash
litigation will reduce dramatically. Litigation will more likely be “big
company versus big company” or “individuals against big companies”, not
individuals against each other. These will settle more quickly with
less variability. Lobbyists will probably succeed in changing the rules
of litigation to favor the bigger companies, further reducing the legal
revenue related to transportation. Forced arbitration and other similar
clauses will become an explicit component of our contractual
relationship with transportation providers.
39.
Some countries will nationalize parts of their self-driving
transportation networks which will result in lower costs, fewer
disruptions and less innovation.
40.
Cities, towns and police forces will lose revenue from traffic tickets,
tolls (likely replaced, if not eliminated) and fuel tax revenues drop
precipitously. These will probably be replaced by new taxes (probably on
vehicle miles). These may become a major political hot-button issue
differentiating parties as there will probably be a range of regressive
versus progressive tax models. Most likely, this will be a highly
regressive tax in the US, as fuel taxes are today.
41.
Some employers and/or government programs will begin partially or
entirely subsidizing transportation for employees and/or people who need
the help. The tax treatment of this perk will also be very political.
42.
Ambulance and other emergency vehicles will likely be used less and
change in nature. More people will take regular autonomous vehicles
instead of ambulances. Ambulances will transport people faster. Same may
be true of military vehicles.
43.
There will be significant innovations in first response capabilities as
dependencies on people become reduced over time and as distributed
staging of capacity becomes more common.
44.
Airports will allow vehicles right into the terminals, maybe even onto
the tarmac, as increased controls and security become possible. Terminal
design may change dramatically as transportation to and from becomes
normalized and integrated. The entire nature of air travel may change as
integrated, multi-modal transport gets more sophisticated. Hyper-loops,
high speed rail, automated aircraft and other forms of rapid travel
will gain as traditional hub and spoke air travel on relatively large
planes lose ground.
45.
Innovative app-like marketplaces will open up for in-transit purchases,
ranging from concierge services to food to exercise to merchandise to
education to entertainment purchases. VR will likely play a large role
in this. With integrated systems, VR (via headsets or screens or
holograms) will become standard fare for trips more than a few minutes
in duration.
46.
Transportation will become more tightly integrated and packaged into
many services — dinner includes the ride, hotel includes local
transport, etc. This may even extend to apartments, short-term rentals
(like AirBnB) and other service providers.
47.
Local transport of nearly everything will become ubiquitous and
cheap — food, everything in your local stores. Drones will likely be
integrated into vehicle designs to deal with “last few feet” on pickup
and delivery. This will accelerate the demise of traditional retail
stores and their local economic impact.
48.
Biking and walking will become easier, safer and more common as roads
get safer and less congested, new pathways (reclaimed from roads/parking
lots/roadside parking) come online and with cheap, reliable transport
available as a backup.
49.
More people will participate in vehicle racing (cars, off road,
motorcycles) to replace their emotional connection to driving. Virtual
racing experiences may also grow in popularity as fewer people have the
real experience of driving.
50.
Many, many fewer people will be injured or killed on roads, though
we’ll expect zero and be disproportionately upset when accidents do
happen. Hacking and non-malicious technical issues will replace traffic
as the main cause of delays. Over time, resilience will increase in the
systems.
51.
Hacking of vehicles will be a serious issue. New software and
communications companies and technologies will emerge to address these
issues. We’ll see the first vehicle hacking and its consequences. Highly
distributed computing, perhaps using some form of blockchain, will
likely become part of the solution as a counterbalance to systemic
catastrophes — such as many vehicles being affected simultaneously.
There will probably be a debate about whether and how law enforcement
can control, observe and restrict transportation.
52.
Many roads and bridges will be privatized as a small number of
companies control most transport and make deals with municipalities.
Over time, government may entirely stop funding roads, bridges and
tunnels. There will be a significant legislative push to privatize more
and more of the transportation network. Much like Internet traffic,
there will likely become tiers of prioritization and some notion of
in-network versus out-of-network travel and tolls for interconnection.
Regulators will have a tough time keeping up with these changes. Most of
this will be transparent to end users, but will probably create
enormous barriers to entry for transportation start-ups and ultimately
reduce options for consumers.
53. Innovators will come along with many awesome uses for driveways and garages that no longer contain cars.
54.
There will be a new network of clean, safe, pay-to-use restrooms and
other services (food, drinks, etc) that become part of the value-add of
competing service providers
55. Mobility for seniors and people with disabilities will be greatly improved (over time)
56.
Parents will have more options to move around their kids on their own.
Premium secure end-to-end children’s transport services will likely
emerge. This may change many family relationships and increase the
accessibility of services to parents and children. It may also further
stratify the experiences of families with higher income and those with
lower income.
57.
Person to person movement of goods will become cheaper and open up new
markets — think about borrowing a tool or buying something on
Craigslist. Latent capacity will make transporting goods very
inexpensive. This may also open up new opportunities for P2P services at
a smaller scale — like preparing food or cleaning clothes.
58.
People will be able to eat/drink in transit (like on a train or plane),
consume more information (reading, podcasts, video, etc). This will
open up time for other activities and perhaps increased productivity.
59.
Some people may have their own “pods” to get into which will then be
picked up by an autonomous vehicle, moved between vehicles automatically
for logistic efficiencies. These may come in varieties of luxury and
quality — the Louis Vuitton pod may replace the Louis Vuitton trunk as
the mark of luxury travel
60. There will be no more getaway vehicles or police vehicle chases.
61.
Vehicles will likely be filled to the brim with advertising of all
sorts (much of which you could probably act on in-route), though there
will probably be ways to pay more to have an ad free experience. This
will include highly personalized en route advertising that is
particularly relevant to who you are, where you’re going.
62.
These innovations will make it to the developing world where congestion
today is often remarkably bad and hugely costly. Pollution levels will
come down dramatically. Even more people will move to the cities.
Productivity levels will go up. Fortunes will be made as these changes
happen. Some countries and cities will be transformed for the better.
Some others will likely experience hyper-privatization, consolidation
and monopoly-like controls. This may play out much like the roll-out of
cell services in these countries — fast, consolidated and inexpensive.
63.
Payment options will be greatly expanded, with packaged deals like cell
phones, pre-paid models, pay-as-you-go models being offered. Digital
currency transacted automatically via phones/devices will probably
quickly replace traditional cash or credit card payments.
64.
There will likely be some very clever innovations for movement of pets,
equipment, luggage and other non-people items. Autonomous vehicles in
the medium future (10–20 years) may have radically different designs
that support carrying significantly more payload.
65.
Some creative marketers will offer to partially or fully subsidize
rides where customers deliver value — by taking surveys, by
participating in virtual focus groups, by promoting their brand via
social media, etc.
66.
Sensors of all sorts will be embedded in vehicles that will have
secondary uses — like improving weather forecasting, crime detection and
prevention, finding fugitives, infrastructure conditions (such as
potholes). This data will be monetized, likely by the companies who own
the transportation services.
67.
Companies like Google and Facebook will add to their databases
everything about customer movements and locations. Unlike GPS chips that
only tell them where someone is at the moment (and where they’ve been),
autonomous vehicle systems will know where you’re going in real-time
(and with whom).
68.
Autonomous vehicles will create some new jobs and opportunities for
entrepreneurs. However, these will be off-set many times by
extraordinary job losses by nearly everyone in the transportation value
chain today. In the autonomous future, a large number of jobs will go
away. This includes drivers (which is in many states today the most
common job), mechanics, gas station employees, most of the people who
make cars and car parts or support those who do (due to huge
consolidation of makers and supply chains and manufacturing automation),
the marketing supply chain for vehicles, many people who work on and
build roads/bridges, employees of vehicle insurance and financing
companies (and their partners/suppliers), toll booth operators (most of
whom have already been displaced), many employees of restaurants that
support travelers, truck stops, retail workers and all the people whose
businesses support these different types of companies and workers.
69.
There will be some hardcore hold-outs who really like driving. But,
over time, they’ll become a less statistically relevant voting group as
younger people, who’ve never driven, will outnumber them. At first, this
may be a 50 state regulated system — where driving yourself may
actually become illegal in some states in the next 10 years while other
states may continue to allow it for a long time. Some states will try,
unsuccessfully, to block autonomous vehicles.
70.
There will be lots of discussions about new types of economic
systems — from universal basic income to new variations of socialism to a
more regulated capitalist system — that will result from the enormous
impacts of autonomous vehicles.
71.
In the path to a truly driverless future, there will be a number of key
tipping points. At the moment, freight delivery may push autonomous
vehicle use sooner than people transport. Large trucking companies may
have the financial means and legislative influence to make rapid,
dramatic changes. They are also better positioned to support hybrid
approaches where only parts of their fleet or parts of the routes are
automated.
72.
Autonomous vehicles will radically change the power centers of the
world. They will be the beginning of the end of burning hydrocarbons.
The powerful interests who control these industries today will fight
viciously to stop this. There may even be wars to slow down this process
as oil prices start to plummet and demand dries up.
73.
Autonomous vehicles will continue to play a larger role in all aspects
of war — from surveillance to troop/robot movement to logistics support
to actual engagement. Drones will be complemented by additional
on-the-ground, in-space, in-the-water and under-the-water autonomous
vehicles.
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