Motor vehicles are going to change, and we’re changing with them

For some time now I have the growing belief that a series of events are creating the perfect storm that will see the end of car ownership and the way we use motor vehicular transport. Yet most people, when I tell them that self-driving vehicles will start to circulate on our roads around 2020, just four years away, they look at me with skepticism.

I don’t know why: the evidence is there for all to see: whole areas of some cities, like Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, along with entire countries, like Australia, are working on this basis, or even sooner. The upscale LA district’s decision to move to self-driving vehicles is based on its modern infrastructure, its size, and its benign climate, while in Australia, the transport minister says that within five years all the rules will be in place and the roads readied to take self-driving vehicles, while measures will be taken to compensate drivers and others put out of work by the transition. It has already compensated taxi drivers after allowing ridesharing in last year.

Meanwhile, environmentally aware countries like the Netherlands are looking at ban on the sale of petrol and diesel-engine vehicles by 2025, a decision that should be taken much sooner, but that makes us think about the collateral effects of cheap oil and the producing countries’ strategies to prevent the transition to other means of propulsion. And while fuel is definitely a factor, the real issue here is not energy, but the change in thinking about ownership.

In the United States, the motor industry lobby is already pressuring the government to delay licensing self-driving vehicles, some manufacturers are making progress with cars that can see in the dark, while others are working on producing electric and semi self-driving vehicles at a reasonable price. And finally, we are hearing more and more about an Apple tie-up to produce a car with a German manufacturer, the much-vaunted iCar, for which it is putting together an all-star team, and that would be on our roads by 2019 or 2020. There it is again, that magic year.

I don’t know if we’ll ever see flying cars, but I do know that there are some big changes down the road, and that they’re going to be happening sooner than most of us think.

(En español, aquí)