Future of Private Plates

[Edwin]

It may be that long term, no car manufacturer will be willing to SELL cars.

More and more businesses are switching to a pay monthly, own nothing business model (Microsoft Office, Adobe, Spotify, Netflix etc. etc.) so they may figure on making more money by becoming fleet on-demand vehicle providers. Especially if you increase usage to near-100% of the population, including the old, the young, those with poor or no sight, etc.

Under this scenario, people would subscribe to one or more vehicle clubs (just like they do one or more video on demand services today), with a wide mix of plans encompassing different vehicles and usage frequencies...

 

[Edwin]

The Mercedes 2030 self-driving car prototype video is a bit of fun. They’re being very conservative with the design changes from an ordinary car, but it does at least start to point the way towards what might be.

Note too that without any of the usual controls, the interior of that little car appears surprisingly roomy.

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[Edwin]

Self-driving cars of the future may offer a revolutionarily smooth ride using technology like this...
http://www.clearmotion.com/

(Because when your car is essentially a “mobile entertainment room” you’ll almost certainly be willing to put up with far far less of a rough ride than when you’re steering it and “reading the road”. With tech like the above, and decent sound-proofing, it would probably even be possible to get a comfortable sleep on a longer journey.)

 

[BREWSTERS]

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/...te-sales/ar-AAuLVET?li=BBoPJKX&ocid=DELLDHP17

If they do phase out number plates, a lot of people are going to be pissed off.

Autonomous vehicles are bad news. They'll lead to a lack of freedom of movement and dumbing down of the masses. Driving is Not only that, how many people are employed in taxis, trucks, delivery vans etc? Over 1 million.

 

[scottmccloud]

They'll lead to a lack of freedom of movement and dumbing down of the masses.

Why?

 

[BREWSTERS]

Dumbing down because the skill of driving will be lost, like so many others. And lack of freedom of movement because, the government are pushing for autonomous vehicles for a reason, and it's not because they're distraught that c. 3000 people a year die on the roads...like they care.

 

[Edwin]

Yeah, sure, it’s tragic opening up the ability to travel by car to 100% of the population, not merely to those who can afford the expense to learn to drive and then to buy and maintain and tax and insure and fuel a vehicle. And of course it’s a terrible thing to allow the young, the elderly and the infirm the same total freedom to travel as a car driver enjoys today. (Hope my sarcasm is evident enough here.)

There are negatives to self-driving cars when it comes to sectoral job losses (though there will be huge efficiency improvements and cost cutting in other sectors as a result) but to suggest they’re being built as some kind of conspiracy is beyond ridiculous!

 

[BREWSTERS]

Yeah, sure, it’s tragic opening up the ability to travel by car to 100% of the population, not merely to those who can afford the expense to learn to drive and then to buy and maintain and tax and insure and fuel a vehicle. And of course it’s a terrible thing to allow the young, the elderly and the infirm the same total freedom to travel as a car driver enjoys today. (Hope my sarcasm is evident enough here.)

Are these autonomous cars going to be provided free by the government? If not, how do you justify the above?

There are negatives to self-driving cars when it comes to sectoral job losses (though there will be huge efficiency improvements and cost cutting in other sectors as a result) but to suggest they’re being built as some kind of conspiracy is beyond ridiculous!

What efficiency and cost cutting? Where will we see costs coming down?

I imagine you're also a cheerleader for a cashless society too, would that be a fair assumption?

 

[Edwin]

Self driving car travel will be much cheaper than taxis. When you cut fuel and wages out of the equation that’s a huge saving.

Efficiency and cost cutting in sectors such as delivery/logistics, which means any business which relies on shipping physical products from A to B will see big savings.

As for a cashless society, I’ve no idea why you’re making that “connection”. It has nothing to do with self-driving cars (and no, I’m not).

And besides, I don’t see myself as a “cheerleader” for driverless vehicles either, just an educated observer of what lies just around the corner. The future will come whether cheerleading happens or not, if the imperative for change is there...

 

[BREWSTERS]

Some sweeping statements there Edwin!
How much will autonomous cars cost? You must have a price range in mind to be able to say they will be cheaper than taxis. And your comment from your previous post re "ability to travel by car to 100% of the population" implies that everyone will be able to afford one. Also, what are the cars going to run on if not fuel, whether that's traditional or electric, they will need to be fuelled. And there will still be taxis, only driverless, and most taxis are driver owned...with 1m+ drivers out of work (across all driver segments not just taxi drivers) and claiming benefits, what's going to happen to your tax bill?

There won't be any savings passed on to consumers in the delivery / logistics arena. I'm a logistics manager responsible for shipping approx. 300 containers a year, and thousands of pallets. Generally the cost of deliveries is very low due to intense competition, there's not much room for reductions.

The connection I make between autonomous vehicles, and the push for a cashless society, is that they are both being sold to us as an easier solution. But what happens when the computer says 'no'? What happens when the car tells you where you can or can't go?

 

[TRUK]

The Mercedes 2030 self-driving car prototype video is a bit of fun. They’re being very conservative with the design changes from an ordinary car, but it does at least start to point the way towards what might be.

Note too that without any of the usual controls, the interior of that little car appears surprisingly roomy.

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That self-driving little pod would be crushed like a bug by a dumb american who drives a 4x4 GMC truck. And that is called freedom of democracy to drive whatever you want.

In mixed traffic noone want to be in that little thing. However If you allocate dedicate lanes for self-driving cars it would work.

 

[Edwin]

Some sweeping statements there Edwin!
How much will autonomous cars cost? You must have a price range in mind to be able to say they will be cheaper than taxis.

It's worth taking a look at UBS's detailed study.
https://neo.ubs.com/shared/d1RIO9MkGM/ues83702.pdf

They estimate that rides in "robotaxi" fleets will be 80% cheaper than an equivalent taxi ride today. In other words, for £2 you'll enjoy the equivalent of £10 worth of travel at current taxi/Uber rates. They also estimate that the average household in a major city will save around 5,000 Euro a year from switching from private car ownership to mobility-as-a-service trips i.e. using cars that are summoned "on demand" as needed.

Now granted that may still not be affordable to "everyone", but it's dramatically cheaper than the current situation. It means those who already have cars will be able to make significant savings by changing their behaviour, and those who don't may well be able to afford travel options they never used to to be able to.

 

[martin-s]

It won't be people changing their behaviour that delivers this vision. It'll be new generations with different behaviour.

 

[BREWSTERS]

The UBS vision - shows a saving in London of c. €3500/year...the €5k figure is an average from major cities worldwide. And this is based on a 40km/day commute....that's quite a high figure I'd suggest, especially around London. And it's also based on two people sharing.

Asking your honest opinion, do you really think that the cost will be reduced by 80%? Who will buy the vehicles? Bare in mind a regular EV currently costs 200-300% of an equivalent regular car. Replacing the fuel cells costs £thousands. Think about it...if a taxi firm could buy an autonomous driving fleet today, could they offer even a 20% reduction in fair prices and stay in business? If your answer is no, then what makes you believe an 80% reduction is possible in years ahead?

Does their report take into account the tax burden created due to the reduction of new cars being built, advertised, sold, serviced, fuel duty reductions? We're talking £hundreds of billions that'll need to be replaced. Then there's the jobs that provided the above. I can see that €3500 being wiped out very quickly.

A report can be created to promote virtually everything. They guess that 80% of the urban population would be using robotaxis...yet a reduction of new car sales of only 10%. That doesn't sound right to me.

 

[Edwin]

No individuals are going to BUY them, at least at first. If you watch the sector closely, you’ll see that major players are all working towards variants of mobility-as-a-service, ie a Uber-type model only without drivers in the picture. Uber, incidentally, has committed in principle to buying 40,000 autonomous cars. Other manufacturers will operate their own fleets, alone or in partnership.

So the likely evolution is that they will first replace taxis and second/third cars in multicar households.

As the technology gets cheaper (and it will, eg LiDAR sensors cost $75,000 3 years ago vs under $1,000 today) then self-driving vehicles will start to take the place of a family’s main mode of transport. And at that point, the cars might be called on demand, leased or privately owned.

 

[Edwin]

BTW 80% cheaper journeys don’t mean 80% less revenue per vehicle. Traffic models suggest that each fleet vehicle will do 3x to 4x as many journeys as now. So each car should earn nearly as much as now - but 100% of that income goes to the fleet operator without having to account for a full-time salary.

 

[martin-s]

Might work to replace taxies, or for people who fight for parking space in cities. Can't see it in the countryside.

 

[BREWSTERS]

Good discussion.

By 'buying' I don't necessarily mean a purchase...as of most new cars nowadays, the vast majority are leased, it's only after they've changed 'ownership' a couple of times that they start to be purchased outright. But the fact remains someone foots the bill for it.

I'm sure the tech will come down in price, but the cost of the hardware will rise as with everything. I can't see the cost of batteries coming down much.

My main concerns over autonomous vehicles is primarily the number of jobs that could go because of them, and the human and financial costs of that, which is something you haven't addressed. And secondly, I believe that once a certain number of these are on the roads, self driving vehicles will mandatorily be phased out. Consider this; if cars were just being invented, do you think any government would allow us to drive them?

 

[Edwin]

About 4 million jobs in the US are in driving-related professions. So they are the most obviously endangered (Truck drivers even more than taxi drivers, because of their higher wages and the higher value add of their services from an overall economic perspective.)

But determining winners and losers overall is enormously complex since there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of impacted groups, but equally a ton of new business opportunities that never existed before.

For instance (just one example) if people used to commute an hour each way, driving themselves, that’s 2 hours a day of free/spare/available time for work, online shopping, leisure pursuits, remote meetings, hobbies, writing, eating, sleeping etc. And many of those activities will generate new revenue that their providers didn’t have before automation entered the picture.

 

[Edwin]

You’re quite correct in one respect: once a key percentage of all cars on the road are autonomous, there will be immense pressure to take non-autonomous vehicles out of the picture. Exactly where that “tipping point” will be is open to conjecture, but it is bound to present itself at some point.