I completely agree with the headline of this blog post, but not with the overall sentiment. Driverless cars are going to change the world, and for the better. I’m not sure how much they will do so in my lifetime, it’s hard to believe that anyone born before 1985 or so is going to completely trust them.
The car insurance industry will cease to exist. These cars aren’t going to crash. Even if there are hold-outs that drive themselves, insurance would be so expensive they couldn’t afford it, as no one else would need it.
These cars will crash. For as long as humans are allowed to drive, they will be causing accidents, hitting other driverless cars and each other. There are also a number of causes of accidents that are still going to happen, such as those involving wildlife or severe weather or mechanical failure. The robocars will handle these situations far better than humans, but they will still happen, and people will still be injured and killed as a result.
If the cars don’t crash, then the auto collision repair / auto body industry goes away. The car industry also shrinks as people don’t have to replace cars as often.
The car industry will likely shrink over time, just as any other technology-driven industry as. They will be forced to evolve to new products. This will happen slowly enough that if they’re properly managed, they should be able to shrink through attrition.
Long-haul truck driving will cease to exist. Think how much money trucking companies will save if they don’t have to pay drivers or collision and liability insurance. That’s about 3 million jobs in the States. Shipping of goods will be much cheaper. On that note, no more bus drivers, taxi drivers, limo drivers.
This is definitely true. I bear no ill will towards professional drivers but I think we can find jobs that are more rewarding for people than driving goods or passengers from point A to point B, and often drive back to A with an empty truck. Trucks also account for the vast majority of road wear, a single tractor trailer can do as much damage to a road as nearly 10,000 normal cars. The main reason we load so much weight onto a truck is so you only need one driver. It will be more efficient to send smaller loads by robotruck, as they can be better targeted (think one truck per state rather than one truck per region), which will result in smaller trucks.
Meter maids. Gone. Why spend $20 on parking when you can just send the car back home? There goes $40 million in parking revenue to the City of Vancouver by the way.
Considering much of that revenue is probably supporting the collection of that revenue (meter maids, infrastructure, towing, courts,etc.) I don’t think this is a net loss. Also, fewer parking spots means more pleasant streets with less traffic problems.
Many in cities will get rid of their cars altogether and simply use RoboTaxis. They will be much cheaper than current taxis due to no need for insurance (taxi insurance costs upwards of $20,000/year), no drivers, and no need for taxi medallions (which can cost half a million in Vancouver). You hit a button on your iPhone, and your car is there in a few minutes. Think how devastating that would be to the car industry. People use their cars less than 10% of the time. Imagine if everyone in your city used a RoboTaxi instead, at say 60% utilization. That’s 84% fewer cars required.
Absolutely!
No more deaths or injuries from drinking and driving. MADD disappears. The judicial system, prisons, and hospital industry shrink due to the lack of car accidents.
Let us hope that we don’t see MADD exhibit the Shirky Principle (“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”) and simply fades away to an irrelevance we can all agree is a success.
Car sharing companies like Zip, Modo, Car2Go are all gone. Or, one of them morphs into a robo-taxi company.
I think they will definitely be robotaxis, but there will also be a need for specialty cars like pickups. We may even see an increased diversity of car designs available for rental where you can have a special grocery-mobile sent over, or a van with 12 seats, or one with extra entertainment options for your long trips, and so on.
Safety features in cars disappear (as they are no longer needed), and cars will become relatively cheaper.
Very unlikely, as people buy fewer cars and use them less frequently the prices will go up accordingly. We’ll also probably require, through legislation, even more safety features, simply because of an inherent distrust of the technology.
I’m really hoping that robocars are a reality within the next 30-40 years when I will be at the point where I shouldn’t be driving any more, and I’m happy to see that we actually seem on track to do that.
