By 2030, you probably won't own a car, but you may get a free trip with your morning coffee. Transport-As-A-Service will use only electric vehicles and will upend two trillion-dollar industries. It's the death spiral for cars.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/death-spiral-for-cars-by-2030-you-probably-wont-own-one-93626/
I think that's true, but I also suspect that suburban & rural families will keep a cheap electric 'beater' or two --probably from the likes of TaTa Motors or Chinee. Once we go autonomous, we won't need crumple zones, bumper impact minimums, air bags, etc. Some cars will be glorified golf carts.
I don't think it will happen that quickly. Another decade or two at least.
Too many people barely getting around in 1k-3k cars, total infrastructure rebuild and political wars will drag progress down to a crawl.
>decade or two
One.
related: Ford getting ready for the car-pocalypse?
Ford Plans to Cut About 10% of Global Staff
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-16/ford-planning-to-cut-about-10-of-global-workforce-wsj-reports
>One.
The tech and infrastructure, yes. Related political fighting, reshuffling, fallout to get it online? Probably another decade-ish, imo. There are lots of deep pockets out there invested in the status quo.
>related: Ford getting ready for the car-pocalypse?
I'd say that's more about GM wiping the floor with them the last few years. Well, that plus not as many millennials not needing/wanting new wheels every 3-5 yrs.
Want to know why I feel this is bullshit? This quote:
QuoteThe provision of this service may come virtually free as part of another offering
To which I say
QuoteOur children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter....
-- Lewis Strauss, then Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, 1954
In the cities, perhaps, where car ownership brings far more hassles and far fewer conveniences than in the country. So perhaps for most of the population, that will be true. For most of the US by land area, it will not. 2030 is only 13 years away and the average age of the fleet is now almost that high. So we would expect cars bought today to be about half the fleet in 2030. The person who buys a car in 2022 will need a great value proposition in order to throw it away (as the used market would have collapsed) in order to go to Transport as a Service.
Plus, as Drastic says... How long did it take to rebuild one small stretch of highway after the Loma Prieta earthquake? How long did the Big Dig take? If this changeover requires infrastructure, I don't think we'll see a owner-free car culture by 2030.
>Ford getting ready
Shake-up news everywhere. Succinct headline:
Jim Hackett, head of Ford's autonomous vehicle unit, replaces Mark Fields as CEO
http://www.techspot.com/news/69413-jim-hackett-head-ford-autonomous-vehicle-unit-replaces.html
>glorified golf carts
x-post Electric Cars Soon Will Cost Less Than Gasoline Autos, Research Shows
http://www.industryweek.com/energy/electric-cars-soon-will-cost-less-gasoline-autos-research-shows
<added>
As for costs, they are comparing EVs that are made 'in the image of' current vehicles. BUT robotics, portable tech/entertainment/instrumentation & AI will decimate whole swathes of now-expensive construction. For example, do we need airbags if the cars never wreck? No.
Quote from: rcjordan on May 31, 2017, 12:34:09 PM
<added>
For example, do we need airbags if the cars never wreck? No.
Which sets off another whole cycle that allows making cars lighter and thus more efficient and thus cheaper to run.
Also, electric cars supposedly have less than half as many parts as ICE cars, which leads to another set of efficiencies in the long run.
Huge portions of the engineering of current vehicles is devoted to impact resistance. Not being able to meet US crash-dummy requirements is the primary reason we don't see the likes of TaTa Motors here (remember the Yugo, hhh). When impact events become statistically irrelevant, everything changes.
The question is: will people purchase a car without air bags? Even if the stats say there are "no" accidents?
We'll do anything if the price is right.
The trick is to make the trucks self driving and safe at the same time. I'm not going to buy a car without safety features and still get stuck in a canyon of semi's driven by humans at 80 mph on the Interstate. And even then, even though AI can react faster than I can, we are all still subject to the laws of physics.
This is steel country around here, you do not want to tangle with a truck hauling steel coils.
I think trucks will probably be at the forefront of the technology, the trucking industry will save billions by getting rid of drivers.
They are already testing out self-driving rubbish trucks in some countries. Taking what was once a 3 person job to a one person position.
Ford to Slash $14 Billion in Costs Under New CEO
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-03/ford-to-slash-14-billion-in-costs-cut-car-models-under-new-ceo
That's going to leave a mark.
For some reason, steel mills' Black Monday comes to mind.
"Believe it or not, this week Detroit, America's big automakers, are saying they want to take gasoline out of the car business. Here's what GM's chief of global product development said Monday: "General Motors believes in an all-electric future." As in electric cars. They don't exactly have a choice. China and Europe and California are in the driver's seat. And they want electric. Self-driving cars will be electric. And Detroit is going. This hour, On Point: Here comes the electric car future, for real."
http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/10/04/electric-car-ford-gm
"General Motors offered a sneak peak of the future Monday, briefly revealing three models that could be among 20 new all-electric vehicles it will launch by 2023."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2017/10/02/gm-plots-all-electric-future-with-20-new-evs-and-fuel-cell-vehicles-coming-by-2023/#6001adef76ec
"A DEFINING moment for the auto industry." That is how usually restrained analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, described the news that China's government wants to move towards a ban on gas guzzlers. On September 9th, Xin Guobin, vice minister of industry and information technology, told an automotive conference in Tianjin, a grimy industrial city near Beijing, that the government is developing a long-term plan to phase out vehicles powered by fossil fuels."
https://www.economist.com/news/business/21728980-its-government-developing-plan-phase-out-vehicles-powered-fossil-fuels-china-moves
>They don't exactly have a choice. China and Europe and California are in the driver's seat.
US auto manufacturers don't have a snowball's chance in hell of maintaining their dominance in the new order that's emerging. The rapidly approaching future is one of sensors, algorithms, and 3d printers --all of which are converging to displace their old, familiar electro-mech technology. Their precarious position parallels that of print media when the internet hit.
Once we get past the cost of bleeding edge development, it's going to be far cheaper to produce a vehicle, too. Margins will be razor-thin, though. Dealerships will be squeezed out.
I would imagine autonomous cars are little way off into the future here in South Africa - the average working class struggle to buy an entry level 1.1ltr VW polo down here
>polo
Watch India. Tata, Mahindra, or similar are probably going to crack the 2nd-world market.
http://www.livemint.com/Industry/ce5DCpEBco3rOhzR6CUDAN/Mahindra-matches-Tata-Motorss-EV-tender-bid-to-supply-150.html
>autonomous
I think we're going to see 2 stages here in the US. Electric first, then autonomous EVs.
Ford also aims to boost its profit margins. That plan hinges on an effort to reduce materials costs by $10 billion, while also cutting engineering spending by $4 billion. It'll do the latter primarily by getting rid of some passenger car models. YAHOO!
>Margins will be razor-thin
Especially when the majority of ownership shifts to Uber, Lyft, etc.. Which tech company will be the first to buy a major auto manufacturer?
>US auto manufacturers
Back during the bailout of GM and Chrysler I remember hearing some expert interviewed and he warned that the US government was just buying time with the bailout. That there was so much excess global car production capacity, so much cheaper, that the days of producing cars in the US were numbered.
That is mass production.
Someday we will get 3D printed cars made to order and I can get a Land Rover Defender a new vintage London black cab or a new vintage Checker Marathon. Proper cars. :)
>a major auto manufacturer
I wouldn't touch a US manufacturer because of their legacy issues --pensions, wages, obsolete facilities, and assorted rustbelt issues-- to name a few. Besides, they'll be cheaper when they file bankruptcy.
>Land Rover Defender a new vintage London black cab or a new vintage Checker Marathon
Funny you should mention Checker. The Checker and the VW Beetle had a model of production that Debbie says will resurface with future auto production --rebuildable cars with a long life cycle.
>autonomous
Senate bill would allow autonomous cars to not have any human controls like steering wheel or brakes.
https://qz.com/1094420/us-senate-committee-oks-self-driving-cars-with-no-steering-wheels/
But will people buy them?
Quote from: Brad on October 04, 2017, 10:40:08 PM
>autonomous
But will people buy them?
When your insurance company tells you that the car without the steering wheel will be $500/yr to insure and the one with the steering wheel will be $2500, that will start to be an incentive both for the cost savings and for the message it sends.
But obviously, insurance companies will be crunching the numbers, so it will have to be born out by the stats before that happens, so early adopters will not get those benefits. Over the long term, though, auto insurance rates will drop IMO and companies will start penalizing the remaining, self-selecting demographic that wants to mess with the wheel.
I see piloted vehicles becoming like horses - something most people will drive at the track and in recreational areas. There's still a guy in the nearest town to me who rides his horse to the grocery store and I suppose in 50 years there will be people driving their cars... but they'll pay a lot more in car insurance than the cowboy pays in horse insurance.
It Doesn't Matter How Much Trump, Pruitt, and America Love Gas GuzzlersQuoteIn the past year, the following has happened: India, with its 1.4 billion people and a vast car market, has set an admittedly ambitious goal of having all new cars be electrified by 2030. In July, both France and the U.K., the ninth and sixth largest economies in the world, respectively, said they would effectively ban the sale of gasoline-driven vehicles by 2040. Last week, China, which represents the largest auto market in the world, said that in 2019, 10 percent of the cars sold by large automakers in the country would have to be electric. In California, which effectively has its own emissions policy, activists are making noises about banning the combustion engine entirely.
It's premature to call time on the combustion engine for a host of reasons. Many of these proposed bans are two decades in the future, and many of the goals promulgated are unrealistic
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2017/10/cars_are_going_electric_with_or_without_america.html
All this talk about electric cars is fine for compact places like most of Europe and cities like NYC, but you're gonna have to greatly increase the range and decrease the charge time for North America before they become a primary vehicle. I think we are going to see combustion /electric cars here for a very long time because of our distances. Now the combustion part might not be burning fossil fuels and that could be good.
In the US its not like we have a lot of alternatives for long distance travel, airlines are worse than a Greyhound bus was in the 70's and we've gutted our passenger rail network.
Not counting my collectible cars or RVs, I keep 4 vehicles for routine use --a Sprinter truck, a Dodge passenger van, a minicar (Honda Fit), and a beater. None of them are expensive ...their total value would be less than a single mid-range Mercedes. I'd buy an EV to replace the minicar *IF/WHEN* it {A} has 350 mile true range, {B} can be recharged in 45 minutes at reasonably convenient locations, and {C} is priced within 10-15% of a comparable gas-burner.
To replace my passenger van, which is my go-to vehicle for traveling larger distances, the specs get far tougher for an EV, particularly recharging. I think it'll require a hybrid unless there is some sort of near-miraculous break-through in battery or hydrogen tech.
Quote from: Brad on October 05, 2017, 11:16:32 AM
you're gonna have to greatly increase the range and decrease the charge time
Recent Headline: asphalt-lithium batteries charge 10-20 times faster than current lithium batteries
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-asphalt-lithium-batteries-faster.html
Headline from a few months ago: graphene in lithium batteries triples energy density
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-graphene-nanotube-hybrid-boosts-lithium-metal.html#nRlv
There is a lot of battery tech in the labs that seems like it has a decent chance of being commercialized within a decade
@rcjordan... more or less the same criteria, though I'd pay more, but I also want 4WD or AWD because we have chain controls and, though this often makes no sense, 4WD are typically allowed to travel without chains when they are required on 2WD.
Tesla of course makes AWD cars, but when I say I would pay more than your 10% premium, not *that* much more.
>There is a lot of battery tech
Agreed, and I'm hopeful. The fellow who invented li-on recently announced a better battery. He ought to know. (and he's in his 90's)
>4wd
Here on the flats, we really don't need it AND you pay an insurance premium because you *might* take it off-road (though, IIRC, 90+% of 4wd vehicles never leave the pavement).
>pavement
But there might be leaves on the driveway, hence the need for 4wd on our Escalades. Paraphrasing Jeremy Clarkson.
I want awd, and I want a car that is not shaped like a mushed wedge that only preschoolers and little people can get into because the roof is down at navel level on me. Just saying.
Quote from: Brad on October 05, 2017, 08:38:06 PM
But there might be leaves on the driveway
When we lived in the Bay Area, I was always doing this analysis for (or maybe "on") people. What you would hear all the time is "I need a 4WD because sometimes I like to go to Tahoe in the winter."
So I would ask how long do you keep your cars (typical answer: 10 years) and how many times to you go to Tahoe in the winter (typical answer: 10) and how many times did you have to put on chains (typical answer: "OH God, all the time. Like six times last winter."
You can hire a chain installer to do it for you for $40. Did you do that? "No"
"Why not?"
"That's too much money. For $40, I'd do it myself."
"So you wouldn't pay $40 to sit in your warm car and let someone else get cold and wet?"
"No. It only takes ten minutes. That's like $240 per hour."
So then I would say
- looking at vehicles that have 4WD and 2WD versions, on average you pay about $3500 for AWD. But since you don't actually need an SUV-sized vehicle, that's $5000 extra
- you give up 2-3 mpg just by adding the 4WD and all the associated extras, but at least 5mpg relative to what you would get if you didn't need 4WD and perhaps as much as 10mpg - at least $500/yr, so $5000 over the life of the car
- then TCO goes up because insurance is higher, drivetrain repairs are higher. Say at least $4000 over the life of the car.
So that's $14,000. Let's be conservative and say $12,000
So you went to Tahoe 10 times. How many times did you have to apply chains? "Oh God. All the time. Like six times last year."
Okay so 12,000/10 years/6 times per year = $100 for every incident where you avoid putting on chains.
By your calculation, it only takes ten minutes, so you're paying $600/hr to avoid having to put on chains.
Needless to say, this exercise neither won friends nor influenced people.
All that to say that vehicle buying decisions are emotional as much as practical, and if you don't have the right emotional appeal, it ain't going to sell.
And if you can convince someone that something is cool, they will spend a lot of money for that cool, regardless of how much or how little sense it makes financially
>Needless to say, this exercise neither won friends nor influenced people.
Hhh! Back in the 80s I used to do something similar to all the guys who put in fireplace inserts and started burning wood to save on their power bill. Add in the cost of remodeling, a chainsaw, a trailer, and -of course- the obligatory new 4wd pickup truck and they would be better off paying $1/kw ...but they didn't want to hear that.
I don't use my 4wd very often at all, but when I do, I need it.
Pulling a 2+ton boat up a steep & wet ramp... no 4wd I must leave boat in the water = fucked.
Going somewhere off road on some random friend's land to adventure around on the dirt bike, get stuck in 2wd with no 4wd? fucked
Plus the rare times we get snow/ice I like being able to do what I want and help friends/family as needed.
Here the 4wd premium on my truck was maybe 2k more, I lose about 1 mpg which is fine.
Price doesn't matter, I don't like being stuck.
Quote from: Drastic on October 06, 2017, 06:25:14 PM
I don't use my 4wd very often at all, but when I do, I need it.
Don't get me wrong. I was not telling people they shouldn't be buying a 4WD. I was telling them their reasons were jacked.
I asked one friend and she said "I'm a middle-aged woman, single and driving a Jeep Wrangler makes me feel younger, hipper and more desireable." I didn't argue with that because you can't. She made the decision for what I would call the right reason. I mean, it wasn't bullshit. She decided it was worth the cost and the uncomfortable ride and so forth because of the way it made her feel. Only she knew the price of that.
Of course, this is the same woman who I ran through the numbers and convinced her to sell her home and who, two years later, told me it was the decision she had ever made. So she was clear-eyed
Yep, I get you.
I've been playing with the idea of grabbing a rough wrangler lately myself just because they're fun. Probably never take it offroad, but having big mud tires, doors off and a bikini top (on the jeep, rc) would be worth paying that premium to me.
Lazy is a powerful motivation.
I leased a Jeep Wrangler I quickly figured out that I could blast down my driveway after a good snow without having to shovel first. Liking that I bought a awd Subaru to replace it when the time came.
>4WD
If I ever move back to Spokane there is a 99% chance I will get a 4WD again. I might only really need it once or twice a year because of the snow (maybe more depending on the winter) but I spent way too many cold, wet days digging my non-4WD owning friends out of snowbanks.
Put chains on the rear drive wheels of a VW kombi van and you can go anywhere. Well, anywhere until you climb a tall, steep snow drift and stand the damn van on its rear end.
We (Dad) used to have an old bug. Chopped the fenders, pulled the hood and used it for hunting.
Get stuck? Get out, pick up front end and set it over. Climb back in and drive away.
Quote from: Drastic on October 07, 2017, 04:23:46 PM
We (Dad) used to have an old bug. Chopped the fenders, pulled the hood and used it for hunting.
Get stuck? Get out, pick up front end and set it over. Climb back in and drive away.
Similar here. In high school, my friend Greg and I would take it ice climbing and drive up the closed, snow covered road next to the snowmobiles. When it got stuck, we would just pull the front end around and point it downhill to go home.
2017:QuoteUS auto manufacturers don't have a snowball's chance in hell of maintaining their dominance in the new order that's emerging. The rapidly approaching future is one of sensors, algorithms, and 3d printers --all of which are converging to displace their old, familiar electro-mech technology. Their precarious position parallels that of print media when the internet hit.
Once we get past the cost of bleeding edge development, it's going to be far cheaper to produce a vehicle, too. Margins will be razor-thin, though. Dealerships will be squeezed out.
Electric cars 'will be cheaper to produce than fossil fuel vehicles by 2027' | Automotive industry | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/09/electric-cars-will-be-cheaper-to-produce-than-fossil-fuel-vehicles-by-2027
Why electric cars will take over sooner than you think
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57253947
I plan to buy a Tesla with rural L4-5 within the next 2 years. Maybe sooner if Biden's $10k subsidy is approved.
+
Super-affordable electricity makes UK motoring cheaper than it's been in 50 years
https://thenextweb.com/news/affordable-electricity-motoring-uk-cheaper-50-years-edf
(Debbie says "until the taxman cometh.")