Remember When We Thought Self-Driving Cars Were A Long Way Off?
You know, back in 2015? Ah, we were so young and naive then. And the music was horrible, to boot.
How were we to know all this talk of autonomous cars coming to market by 2020 and taking over by 2035 wasn’t just tech-bubble bullshit from hare-brained billionaire investors? There had been literally zero precedent for such a leap in consumer adoption of a new and imperfect technology.
I mean sure, we could have looked at the growth of the original U.S. car market, which in 1900 stood at all of 5,000 cars, then grew 50x within a decade, 10x in the next, and by that time had nearly saturated the new car market to the point that one of the largest manufacturers decided to buy up and destroy 650,000 used cars just to ensure there would be enough buyers for the new ones. We could’ve done that.
Then you’ve got commercial air travel, which by all accounts should have been one of society’s greatest fears and most difficult sells. Welp, it turns out that despite having to develop its infrastructure over the course of The Great Depression and WWII, commercial flight adoption ballooned over its first 10-year period, and continued on…
