Autonomous Cars are Going to Change Everything
Autonomous (driverless) cars are coming for your kids and they are coming soon! I actually mean that literally. The day is coming soon where we will be able to use a phone app similar to Lyft and Uber to have a car pick us up and take us where ever you want to go. While not having to drive or even own a car may seem like a big change, most don’t realize that this isn't the biggest disruption society will face due to autonomous cars.
Most people I talk to think autonomous cars are just going to be a feature that you get when you buy a car. While it will most certainly will be an option you can buy, this alone is hardly a disruption. It's almost like cruise control on steroids. While it certainly would be great to relax and watch a TV Show during your commute home, the first major disruption is that people won't have to buy a car in the first place as it will be so easy to just rent cars for single trips.
This means no car maintenance, no car payments, more room in the garage, no parking hassles when going to a city, shopping or the airport and unless you are driving 10 hours a day, you’ll save a good chunk of money. While this prospect seems freeing and amazing, this still does not depict why society will be disrupted.
When the internet started to become mainstream, did anyone really have a concept of how much our lives could change? We knew it was big, but did kids realize the days of camping out in front of Blockbuster to get tickets for a concert were soon to be over? Not paying for long distance phone calls? Video calls from a tiny hand held devices? Paying bills from your phone? Using an open source currency (bitcoin) not controlled by corruptible governments? Did anyone really envision that there’d be a social networking site that would be the backbone communication hub for social uprisings and political unrest in countries like Tunisia?
Autonomous cars are in the same boat, but will be more disruptive. For starters, over the course of a few years as autonomous cars become mainstream, we will essentially lose all driving jobs. Uber, Lyft, Taxis, truck drivers, UPS and FedEx drivers. There will be little reason to rent a car when traveling to different cities, so Hertz, Avis, Enterprise will face some major downsizing. The job loss doesn’t end there, however. Car manufacturers, car dealerships, mechanic shops, airport parking lots, car insurance companies will also be hit hard not to mention all the third party businesses that support manufacturing of large amounts of cars. Losing this large number of jobs, essentially an entire industry so quickly will not go unfelt. Many people will be be out of a job as entire industries disappear.
While the disruption doesn’t stop there, that is where it ceases to become overtly negative. Traffic jams, accidents and drunk driving will be a thing of the past. My nephew is 10 years old and I’m convinced he’ll never pay for his own car insurance, if he even gets a driver’s license and a car in the first place.
While being driverless doesn’t make the car any more prone to having an alternative fuel engine, the desire to use a clean energy source will make electric and hydrogen cars more in demand. It will only take an estimated 9,000 driverless cars to service all of New York City, which is far easier to convert from gas than converting the existing 2 million plus cars. Mother nature will be pleased and our reliance on fossil fuels will be greatly reduced. AdÃos oil spills! Sayonara oil wars! Peace out oil companies!
As people become accepting of driverless cars and use them more than their personal car, we’ll start to see parking lots being under used at the grocery store, malls and downtowns. The unused space could be replaced by trees, walking paths or just about anything better than vast oil laced black pavement.
When we see movies made from this time, we’ll laugh at all the infrastructure that exists in our current landscape. “Oh, I remember when corners used to have three gas stations and there had to be parking lots every where you went.”
This brings us to perhaps the biggest shift triggered from autonomous cars: our mentality towards sharing resources vs owning them. Most of us do not own personal planes, gyms, tennis courts, etc as we can simply "rent" them as needed. Life for many is a game of acquiring stuff just so they can use it once in a while. Society shifting from an ownership/capitalistic society to one where we share a great deal of things very well could be the break through our species needs to truly become free while dramatically improving everyone's standard of living.
So much of what we own sits around idly and unused. Many condo and apartment complexes have already implemented this concept. The residents share the pool, spa, tennis court, rec room, etc. How far will we take this concept? Do we really need our own full fledged kitchen? In the year 2017, Moley Electronics claims to be releasing a robot that makes your meals and does your dishes. Perhaps a new communal living group will have several to share and people in the community will only need personal micro-kitchens. Need a place to get away from it all? Perhaps at the top of your living complex resides a surplus of private balconies where you can watch the sunset. Want to have a bunch of people over to watch the Oscars? Rent a large plush viewing room with an absurdly sized TV that just looks too damn big for your personal living space but is perfect for Oscar parties. It's beyond inefficient for everyone to own all of these things if we aren't using them often.
It’s impossible to predict all that will transpire with the advent of pay-per-use autonomous cars, but I do know it’s big, around the corner and most people have no idea we are on the cusp of a major shift. So buckle up, kids!
