Still processing the magnitude of these changes. One consideration that isn’t mentioned here is the ever diminishing need for people to physically move around for work, shopping etc.. More people every year are skipping the morning/afternoon commutes in favor of working online and attending company meetings via telepresence. A huge (no, wait… “youge”…) part of our future economy will be facilitated by autonomous delivery drones — in some mixture of airborne units delivering small, time-sensitive cargoes (like hot pizza, or some cosmetics and a new pair of heels for tonight’s party..) and autonomous “last mile” land vehicles delivering larger cargoes like a stove or washer/dryer pair or half a pallet of roofing shingles — ALL of which will be ordered online and delivered to the purchaser’s location without the purchaser leaving their home and without delivery drivers. So, one thing I predict is a significant reduction of travel miles per person — the primary reason for people to ever be on the roads will be for social, recreational and cultural purposes, to get out with other people.
I see merit in your vision of TaaS, pooled vehicles spending 90% of their time on the road, stopping only to load/unload cargoes (including people) and to swap battery packs — but I think that the cultural phenomenon (and economic resource) of people deriving status by owning (demonstrating the ability to pay for..) a high-end vehicle will persist in our culture — leading to a system where companies like Uber will find it to be more profitable to enable A-EV owners to sell their surplus transportation capacity in a rideshare service instead of the company buying its own A-EVs.
As for freight delivery.. the physical parameters of semi-trucks have evolved as an optimization of several factors, some of which are becoming obsolete. Trucks are as wide as roadways allow, as tall and heavy as bridges allow, as long as they can be to turn on existing standard street corners — all to maximize the productivity of a driver and the fuel economy (per delivered ton-mile) of the truck. Remove the driver from the equation, and it becomes less efficient to pack 10 pallets for 5 different addresses onto one big truck (taking all 10 to the first address to unload 4, taking 6 to the second to offload 3, 3 to the third, 2 to the fourth, and 1 to the fifth address) as compared to putting them onto 10 autonomous “pallet delivery carts” that can each travel straight to and from the final destination. I honestly wouldn’t be at all surprised to see an autonomous semi truck drive from a distribution point, several hundred miles to a transfer point in another city, at which point it backs up to a ramp and 10 or more autonomous “tenders” deploy to deliver cargoes to separate destinations before returning to the “mothership” truck.
One problem I have with your vision, is the idea of vehicle longetivity. It’s no coincidence that the “average” passenger car lasts for about 150,000 miles, with very little variation between brands and models - they last that long (and rarely any longer) because car makers do not want to build cars that can go 1,000,000 miles or more. If they did, they already would. Your vision requires manufacturers to abandon the “planned obsolescence” business model, to begin producing cars that last 7 times longer (and need to be replaced one-seventh as often). But business schools are overflowing with examples of companies whose products were so good, so durable, that the companies ended up suffering - sometimes dying - from an underdeveloped replacement market. Two examples I can list are Singer sewing machines, and Bucyrus-Erie cranes. My best sewing machine is a Singer 301 from 1950 - it’s still my go-to for basic stitching, I imagine that my unborn grandkids will still use it (if they’re not making their clothes in autonomous “3-D textile printers” by then…). Singer has found a new market in the realm of computerized embroidery, but for many years they struggled to remain profitable and retain a workforce, because their products just never needed replaced. Bucyrus-Erie used to build cranes. The company I work for has three of B-E model 22-B cranes - built in 1943, 1945, and 1952, still running strong, working hard and making money. Meanwhile, the Bucyrus-Erie company now exists nowhere except as an asset on the books of the Caterpillar company. But, the executives who supervise the engineers at the automakers WANT.. and SPECIFY.. that the cars they make should become inoperable or uneconomical to maintain, at just about the same time that the vehicle’s second car loan (one new car loan of 60 months, one used car loan of 48 months - 9 years total) has been paid off. When the payments are done, there’s practically no value left in the vehicle. In the automotive “planned obsolescence” model, people aren’t really buying cars, they’re paying - continuously, for their entire lives - for the value they consume by using the cars for transportation. This ensures a steady, predictable market for replacement vehicles, which allows car companies to commit to long-term contracts for supplies and labor. One could even argue that the government programs of CAFE/EPA Emissions Testing, and “Cash for Clunkers”, promote(d) and accelerate(d) the obsolescence of cars with the goal of supporting jobs in the automobile industry.
But, 1,000,000 mile passenger cars — a godsend for those who own or use them — are anathema to the automakers’ business model, and threaten yet another significant disruption (layoffs, bankruptcies, insolvent pension funds, shrinking IRA balances) in numerous core industries. In essence, your article describes the progressing obsolescence of HUMAN WORK — as gas station attendants, mechanics, drivers, parts suppliers, automobile assembly workers, new and used car salespersons (and as highway patrol officers, MVA and DUI court employees, jailers and rehabilitators for MVA and DUI offenders… and as doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers(!) and EM technicians responding to and repairing damage from Motor Vehicle Accidents…). It would be GREAT to implement technology that saves lives, lowers the human costs of transportation, increases energy efficiency, lowers the importance of oil in the world economy and all that… but with so many industries being impacted in ways that cause dramatic workforce reductions, it’s hard to imagine who would still HAVE jobs that could provide the paychecks to fund the purchases that would be served by autonomous delivery vehicles. If these machines ultimately make human work totally obsolete…. won’t we need to figure out how to tax the machines (or the people & companies that own them) at a rate sufficient to fund a “universal welfare payments” based economy (new taxes which would offset much of the predicted savings…)?
