Self-driving vehicles are going to change the world as we know it
I have been driving around for the last three days of my stay here in Florida in a Tesla Model S, which has prompted me to think about the disruption that self-driving cars are to create.
Yes, I know that the Tesla Model S is not a self-driving car, but driving one is certainly a very different experience to most other vehicles. Aside from its upscale features and impressive acceleration, which leaves most of the muscle cars that abound in these parts behind, there is the question of not having to stop to fill up with gasoline, and the car is designed to make it pretty much impossible to be left without charge in the batteries. Then there is the full connectivity: unlimited music, internet navigation, maps, etc that come included in the price of the car, and that allow it to be continuously updated over the air.
Driving a Tesla imbues one with a sense of being involved in a major change to the automobile industry. When a car made two years ago is able to transmit that sensation of a revolution, of a vision of the future, that is when you really understand that the industry is going through what TechCrunch calls “the IBM 1985” moment. Silicon Valley has launched a successful coup against Detroit, with millions of jobs set to be lost, ushering in a radical change to the industrial landscape of the United States and the rest of the world.
The self-driving car will be on our roads within a decade, in some countries, less than that. The colossal value of Uber, now estimated at more than 50 billion dollars, is no accident: the company’s plans for transportation as a service, or mobility as a service will convert the transport and logistics industry into one based on software, into a platform that can be applied to the movement of people as well as goods from one place to another. We’re no longer talking just about robot taxis, which will soon be with us, but a much more radical change. Mobility is a 10 billion dollar industry based on high-price assets that in many cases are underused: privately owned vehicles are idle 96 percent of the time. If this isn’t a panorama ripe for disruption, I don’t know what is.
Google’s prototype self-driving car has undergone road tests, and has show itself to be infinitely safer that vehicles driven by humans: it is now circulating on the roads of Mountain View, California. For the moment, the passenger has to sit in a driving position, and speeds are limited to 40 kph. The point is that people are quickly getting used to them. Now the first self-driving lorries have been issued with licenses to circulate on US roads, meaning that an industry whose limits and problems are related to the humans behind the wheel (they get tired, have accidents, make the wrong decisions, not the vehicle) will soon be overcome.
And just for good measure, Apple has thrown its hat in the ring by purchasing Coherent Navigation, a startup that produces geolocation maps that are much more accurate than conventional systems. If one thing was going to get things moving in the transport field it was always going to be the entry of Silicon Valley. And now it’s happened.
We’ve still got a long way to go, but we’re going to get there very quickly…
(En español, aquí)
