Ask a Silicon Valley futurist about the potential of self-driving cars, and you’ll hear a vision of shared mobility – people won’t own cars, they’ll subscribe to transportation services that will send vehicles to their doors to pick them up and take them where they want to go. Owning a car will be as much a foreign concept to people 10 years from now as dial-up Internet is today.
Instead of sitting in parking lots, cars will be in constant motion, and far fewer will be needed. It’s a vision that’s drawing huge investments – $1 billion from Ford in February to fund tech startup Argo AI, $1 billion from General Motors (GM) last year to buy Cruise Automation, $500 million from GM in early 2016 to buy a big part of car-sharing service Lyft.
While most industry watchers expect autonomous technology to develop at a rapid pace, a few are suggesting that the utopian future with small numbers of vehicles in constant use is not realistic.
One of the biggest questions for automotive manufacturers and suppliers is what impact autonomous technology will have on sales. Visionaries say producers should brace for massive volume declines as people turn away from ownership. Glenn Mercer, a longtime automotive analyst who has studied autonomous systems for the National Automobile Dealers Association, presents an opposing view.
“If you make an experience cheaper and more effective, people are going to use more of it,” Mercer says. “Better asset utilization and vehicle sharing – some of that may happen. But you’re dramatically increasing the number of people with access to transportation.”
Early adopters of driverless cars will likely be people who can’t drive for themselves, such as disabled and elderly people. With the aging American population, that second group could be massive within the next 15 years, Mercer says.
To read the rest of the story, click here.
From the March 2017 issue of Today’s Motor Vehicles.