73 Honest Predictions for Smart Cars and Trucks
This article is an answer to the 73 Mind-Blowing Implications of Driverless Cars and Trucks by Geoff Nesnow. I will take each one and analyze it from my perspective, because some of them didn’t feel right and wanted to share my ideas with other people on the subject.
First, let’s talk about a few things regarding Uber, because it is referenced in the story, with other tech companies. To make this easier I will use a persona, let’s call him James, for the next few paragraphs.
So, in James’ opinion, Uber is a tech monster, the Goliath that will be the first to fall in the new economy, possibly triggering a new recession and the end of the startup-era. I will give some explanations about why this will happen, and of course, James might be totally wrong, but let’s hear him.
Uber and most of the other implications in the article before mentioned are nice things, the stuff that makes a lot of sense economically speaking. It is a no-brainer to use the cheaper vehicles, the automated routing algorithm, the greener electric technologies (batteries still need fixing/improvement though). They will be cheaper, safer, will deliver better user experience and we will use them … eventually.
The thing is that tech companies will have to fight an unseen enemy, the one that continuously makes economic predictions stay on the same level as astrology: people.
So, there will be groups and parties that will fight tooth and nail against progress and against technology and they will slow things down. Usually technology wins and people adapt around it and it was never more true than today. But that does not mean that those people are not right. You will see in the following paragraphs that there is no right and wrong. There are needs and interests and they are different for each person.
To finish some things about Uber specifically and start-ups in general I will enumerate things that affect them negatively:
- They are not profitable for a long time and usually their medium-term goal is not customer-based profit.
- They work based on gray area laws or their activity is not yet entirely regulated
- Their progress is mostly investor-orientated, specifically on growth
- Cheaper competition chips away their profit margin
- Very vulnerable to legislation meant to restrict their activity
Of course, there are numerous positive characteristics, but the most important are:
- They grow very fast
- They usually get to control an entire market
- They are very disruptive to the existing players
Ok, now when does such a company fail? Answer: When they run out of money, or when they lose their customers as their number one focus.
Basically if this happens with a large enough company or multiple large companies, investors will freak out and try to sell the shares they have in other start-ups, creating a ripple effect with negative consequences. If you don’t already know this, check out the dot-com bubble.
So this is all what James had to say about politics and start-ups. I will take it from here and, if you bear with me, I will describe my take on what will happen when the so called “driverless vehicles” will appear on the road.
What will happen when cars and trucks drive themselves?
- People will still own cars. The number will decrease over time, but not straight away and let’s not mention people’s preferences for property. Yes, a lot of people will use self-driving cars the same way they use public transportation, even sharing rides. But they might be considered naive at first and a lot of people will still use cars as a sign of status and just for the capacity to do it. Existing cars will not just vanish, it will take a while for the switch to happen. The only difference will be that the cars will use AI to drive themselves. So the change is that most of us will afford personal drivers, and this is a good thing. We will have more time to work on the things that matter to us instead of spending time on transportation itself.
- Personal transportation will become a pay-as-you-go service and technology will also affect goods transportation. It is very convenient to call a car via an app right now and this will be used for a while. The difference is that the car will arrive with a virtual driver, which decreases costs by an order of magnitude. Transport will be a commodity even more than it is today. Monopolies might form around large tech companies like Uber, Google and Amazon, but this is already happening in software and new players might appear in the future (usually they are bought up, but there is always room for innovation in the industry).
- There will be government intervention. Good or bad, but there will be. It will be up to the people which services they want to consume and which parties they will vote. What this means is that we will have a lot of flavors of autonomous vehicle legislation and they might be different from city to city at first, not to mention about country level.
- The vehicles will look and feel different, but there will still be cars, buses, trucks, trains, planes etc. and they will be recognized as such.
- There will be charging stations the same way we have gas stations right now. Vehicles will not swap batteries, because this is dangerous and they are difficult to handle. It didn’t work out for phones and it will not work out for cars.
- The vehicles will charge up your phone, laptop and electric scooter if you have one. They will not be used for high power operations like welding and construction works though, because that will not be allowed by the producers (again, it is dangerous and probably there will be software restrictions for this) .
- There will be less human drivers on the road and the first result will be a safer means of transportation. Each car will still have it’s own papers because people love bureaucracy and at first the police might stop the vehicles just out of curiosity.
- People will use smart cars the same way they use their smartphones. They will probably show them, talk about their models, argue about brands etc. There will still be garages, just with fast charges for cars.
- There will still be traffic police and the engineers will have to train the software to manage them giving directions .
- The local mechanics, car dealers and charging stations will be more brand and tech-oriented. They might work as independent contractors for the large companies, but people will still need people to fix stuff for their cars.
- The car industry will change, but it will not die. They probably won’t build a lot of diesel motors, but they will build electric cars and robots. The industry will probably increase as there will also be drones and other kinds of autonomous things ready to be created. Yes, new companies will emerge, similar with the SSD vs HDD industry, but realistically there will still be ICE vehicles created for at least a while and for a lot of purposes (tractors, ships etc). The insurance industry will start to insure software products and the autonomous cars will have specific insurances paid by the owner. We will buy licenses to use the AI in driving and probably the insurance will be part of that cost. The suppliers will most likely adapt to the new products for the market needs.
- Traffic lights and signs will be needed for a while, at least for debugging purposes. The cars might use infrared, but color is important in our environment, so at least some variant of visible light headlights will still be used on the cars themselves.
- We will use public transportation a lot more, but people will pay for convenience. So instead of taking an uber/lyft/bolt/whatever to a metro station or even train/airport they will pay more so that the car will take them straight to the desired destination. This might even affect some long trips because if timing is not an issue we might use cars (driving fatigue will not be an issue anymore) to go everywhere.
- Electricity price will definitely increase and specific countries will export it the same way some export oil right now. The power grid will need to accommodate the new consumers and I agree that it will have to change in order to support it.
- Some countries will be severely affected by the changes in oil/petrol usage, but oil will still be used in the future so there will be ways to mitigate that effect.
- There will be ads for the new models of self-driving cars, even for new software version, made for brand awareness. I don’t think there will be massive changes, they will just use the new products they will have. The software might be separated from the car manufactures similar with PC, but realistically most will be proprietary, like Apple does it for example.
- Companies will invest in technology and solutions that reduce their labor costs, and this is already happening. This is exactly what my company does and it has a huge impact on the market. At this point automation becomes a requirement because the companies that do it have an unfair advantage over the ones that are stuck with the old processes. The basic idea is that people will be hired in more management like positions and the repetitive tasks will be completed by software components.
- The car financing industry will not go away, because people will still want to own cars. On top of that, we will need things like drones and robots so most people will need financing for those.
- An eventual economical crisis will not be triggered by self-driving cars. In fact they might postpone one because they will create higher mobility potential and greater mobility will encourage innovation which drives growth. An eventual crisis will be triggered by student debt, medical system crash or job issues. Or the fall of large startup companies which will bring the stock exchange market down. Or Brexit :). Or oil shortage. Or a war… etc. The recession will come, as it always did, because capitalism works in cycles. No one knows the timing though, or how bad it will be. What is certain is that things will change, as they always do.
- There will be robotic luggage that follows you when you travel and people will love them.
- Transport will become more effective and cheaper at first. After the market settles it will not be a lot cheaper because it still needs to physically transport people from A to B. So unless we email ourselves we will still have to pay money for the utility of moving around.
- The number of taxi and truck drivers will decrease by a lot. It will take a while and there will still be dedicated people for driving, but they will be specialized (like pilots) and might have different responsibilities. This will be one of the most difficult issues to handle and if it happens too fast it will have serious social and economical effects. Done in a managed way it will happen slowly and people will adapt to the new technological changes.
- The politics will get ugly as some people will try to stop the self-driving vehicles. The industry will change in the end because if they won’t, the market will force them to do so (remember Nokia?)
- The market will be controlled by several large players and even some public transportation actors. Transport might become a utility the same way postal services were at a point.
- Transportation and logistics industry will change and most small to medium companies will be swallowed by the large players as they will fight for market share and growth at any cost. If the small guys don’t come up with disruptive solutions on their own, current companies will end up as nameless suppliers for the large tech players, or just close down because they will not be able to compete with their prices.
- Malls will indeed be more service focused and online shops will deliver most of the physical purchases. Some brick and mortar shops will still exist though and some will even thrive.
- Small and medium transport companies will be affected the same way the taxi industry was disrupted by Uber. On the other hand, Fedex, UPS and USPS, DHL etc will not be put out of business by players like Amazon. The transportation industry has it quirks and most likely the big players will adapt or even drive the new technology because they have the financial capacity to address the issue sooner.
- Traditional carriers will adopt the new technologies and use it for their existing processes. Some of them will thrive and some of them will try to fight the change or not take part of it, but eventually the market will balance itself.
- Instead of emptier roads, the traffic will actual increase. The thing is that there is a latent demand for cars by the people which chose not to get a driver’s license or couldn’t get one. So there will be fewer drivers but much more cars on the road. People will be able to commute over even larger distances because they will be able to sleep in their car while they go to work. Of course, working remote and the creation of faster trains will have an impact, but people love to use their cars and will do it even more, exactly like they did with their mobile phones.
- Multi-modal-transportation will have a high impact over freight transportation and we will have autonomous planes and trains (they already are mostly automated). Indeed, people might choose to use the car instead of switching vehicles, because it is more convenient for them.
- Roads will not change for a while because they will be universally used by multiple types of vehicles.
- Premium vehicle services will be similar with luxurious vehicles or VIP seats on the plane if the service is public. Car entertainment will be a thing and it will vary with the customer needs.
- People will brag about how nice, fast, comfortable their cars are. We are emotional animals and private cars will still have the option to control acceleration, handling or top speed. We might even have dedicated drivers which will monitor and intervene in the driving process similar to the initial drone operators.
- Cities will be even denser as the cheaper transportation will attract more people to the “magnet” locations. To combat this issue more “pedestrian only” areas will be declared and used in highly populated areas. A good impact will have the fact that your car can drive itself to a more distant parking spot and come back to pick you up when you are done.
- People will still be late because it is human nature and movement within a complex system will have unexpected events which might slow the system overall (cars will still break, even it might be common to have software bugs instead of mechanical ones)
- DUI/OUI offenses will be a lot fewer, but people will still find ways to break the law with their cars. People will consume more alcohol and even drugs, but there is a finite demand for that, as they won’t suddenly become alcoholics because of a self-driving car.
- Privacy will be a big concern, especially for the public cars (a lot of video cameras in the system). This will be one of the reasons that will motivate people to buy their own cars. People like safe spaces and they make them feel comfortable. If the cars will be too expensive they might rent them or pay for them progressively.
- Traffic offenses like crash litigation will reduce dramatically, but the values involved will be exponentially larger. Lawyers will still have work to do, but indeed a lot of their work will be automated.
- Governments will try to use this to their advantage and control the self-driving fleets for their internal transportation elements. They will most likely fail on the long term, with few exceptions. Self-driving cars are just a tool and without a good business model the public companies will become monetary black holes over time. Of course, they might be heavily subsidized and private companies will have a hard time fighting with them from a disadvantaged position.
- New taxes will be invented to cover the decrease triggered by less fuel tax and traffic tickets. They might be added to the actual price of the vehicles or in the annual property taxes. The countries with a more supple bureaucracy will be cheaper to live into and might develop faster than the ones with a lot of office clerks for example.
- Transport subsidizing will remain more or less the same. There are governments and cities that do this right now and they will continue to do so in the future (cheaper tickets for students, senior citizens etc).
- Ambulances will still have human drivers for a while and most likely they will not be replaced by autonomous vehicles. The risks are so high there that the insurance companies will refuse to insure these types of AI drivers or it will cost a small fortune. Indeed in the USA people will prefer to take alternative transportation to a hospital but this is a specific problem there (usually cost related).
- First response capabilities will improve, but very slowly, because state-owned organization are very resistant to change (with the exception of the military).
- Airports will not allow vehicles right into the terminals mostly because of security concerns. Transport as a concept will change, but painfully slow.
- We will have in-car purchases, but they will redirect to the same shops we will be able to access with our phones. Personal assistants will become a big thing though. We probably won’t order directly most things, we will ask Alexa/Siri/Cortana/Assistant etc to do it for us and it will save us precious time.
- Transportation will remain separated because the cost will not be negligible. So yes, it will be included in premium services, but the base ones will not include free rides.
- Local retail shops will be impacted but they will not disappear. A lot of people still go there for the “shopping experience” and this will happen in the future also.
- Biking and walking will be more common mostly because of the social changes, but they will not affect car transportation too much.
- Vehicle racing and virtual games with racing will most likely decrease because people will be more disconnected from the driving experience. Other types of games will grow in that space.
- The roads will be much safer and people will react disproportionately when accidents do happen. This is normal and will improve the more the system will be used. Hacking, software bugs, technical problems will become the new issues in the industry.
- Hacking and government control of privacy will be huge issues and the society will have to handle them.
- Many roads and bridges will be privatized in the USA which will actually increase the total cost of transportation, similar to the medical system. Other countries will not have this issue.
- There will be a multitude of innovation in the way we use our cars, similar to the evolution of the mobile phones.
- We will have the option to use food, drinks etc inside the cars but as I said transportation will remain its own thing and only premium packages will include anything else.
- Seniors, people with disabilities will be able to move freely.
- Parents will pay premium for children transportation but at first they will have an adult in the car, just in case.
- Person to person transport will become cheaper and easier. The exchange of goods between people will increase. Services like food and cleaning will grow.
- Productivity will increase because people will be able to work, rest or spend time with the family in the car.
- Private pods sounds reasonable but people will prefer to have their own cars with everything included. The capacity to standardize and use this kind of pods will exceed the capacity of our current legislators.
- There will still be getaway vehicles and a lot of police vehicle chases
- Hyper targeted ads will become a problem. Virtual sales people will try to sell you stuff by using human selling techniques. We will have to develop specific tools and options to deal with this new kind of spam.
- The innovations will change a lot of countries. We cannot say if it will be better or worse, but there will definitely be changes, similar to the penetration of the cell phone.
- You will be able to pay for stuff with the car, similar to the way we pay with our phones right now. Even less cash will be used in the future.
- There will be dedicated trucks and vans which will make goods delivery much easier.
- You will be able to rent out your car for marketing or just monetary purposes. So you could get to work and then let the car earn some money for you then get it back for you when you leave. The potential is so high that governments might want to profit and exploit this via special taxes.
- Your driving data will be used by the map providers to hyper-target ads for you or by the government to check and control. The society will develop new tools and procedures to counterbalance this. Some nations will succeed and some will not.
- Google, Facebook and similar companies will invest a fortune to get as much of a market share from this driving data and will sell it for the highest bidder. The government will get it for free, in a transparent or secret way, depending on the country.
- Drivers, mechanics, gas station employees, toll booth operators, truck stops, retail workers etc. will lose their jobs. This might happen slowly as it did in the past, or very fast, driven by tech companies which will disrupt existing structures. Either way, it will be a social and economical crisis and it will be up to the people to decide via consumption and political choices which way the solutions will lead.
- There will be highways dedicated for autonomous vehicles where manual cars will not be allowed. Driving yourself will not become illegal in most cases, the same way you can ride your horse or bicycle on public roads.
- There will be a lot of debate over the new economic systems that could be able to support the new automated reality. The experiments will be very painful and autonomous machines will be forbidden in a lot of areas, or they will be subject to a customs tax, in order to socially protect human workers. (miners anyone?)
- Large trucking companies will be key in technology adoptions because this fits their business model very well. Autonomous trucks will provide a cost advantage over the human resource costs and the AI will probably be provided for free by the truck manufacturers. At first they will probably behave like planes, where the autopilot drives for most of the way and the pilot is used in specific situations.
- The power centers of the world will shift a bit, but realistically the oil prices will provide a counterbalance to the new electric and autonomous future. So planes and large ships will still use fossil fuels and the switch to electric will be taken with the powerful interests who control these industries today, not against them.
- Autonomous military vehicles will lead the way to massacres, similar to the way technology dominated the fields in the world wars. After the initial bloodshed stops it will be difficult for us to say if we are humans anymore.
Note: I would like to thank Medium for sending me an email with the daily digest which resulted in the creation of this article. I would also like to thank Geoff Nesnow for inspiring me to think a bit more about what might actually happen when we will be surrounded by self-driving vehicles. I agree with him on many points and disagree on the other half. I guess we will have to wait and see what the future actually holds for us in 10–20 years. Cheers!
