Horseless Carriages

A Business Insider article just reminded me of something I had forgotten: the first automobiles were simply horseless carriages.

The context is an interview with Ken Lawson, an urban planner at MIT. Lawson argues that self-driving taxis will be great, but they won’t last for that long.

Most trips in the city, he said, involve individuals moving around their own neighborhoods far below the maximum speeds of cars.

“Why have a 4,000-pound automobile that seats five to move one person a short distance at low speed?” he said.

And this:

“It’s just like, you had the horse-and-buggy,” he said. “You got rid of the horse — it still looked like a buggy.”

Lawson doesn’t reveal what he thinks the self-driving equivalent of the Model T will be, though.