Manual driven cars will not disappear, what will happen is insurance will go through the roof as more self-driving cars are added to the roads. There will be some roads declared for self-driven cars only and some that will allow both.
Many people like having cars. They are places of privacy. They are vehicles whose sunk costs are turned into travel conveniences, with weekend trips to skiing and annual road.
Cars hold a special place in the imagination.
“We’re making great time”
“Zero to 60 in 7.2 seconds? I can do better than that”
These words are like a narcotic, stimulant, and aphrodisiac. Once someone has uttered them, the car will begin to move faster, focus will deepen, and the need to make even better time will set in.
Since man first domesticated the horse, he has been obsessed with things that move rapidly. We’ve all seen Top Gun and, homoerotic underpinnings aside, never have truer words been spoken than “I feel the need: the need for speed.” This is why men buy sports cars and motorcycles designed for no other purpose than going really fast.
I want to get from point A to point B in an amount of time that stuns people. I want them to know I chose the best route, took the fewest breaks, and generally kicked ass.
Many automotive theorists seem to focus on the car itself as the central element, to predict radical changes in human behavior related to car ownership, there’s little reason to believe that people will become rational just because of a new technology. There will be an impact on private vehicle ownership, but not nearly as big as some advocates suggest (in my humble opinion).
Driverless cars are likely to create new business opportunities and have a broad reach, touching companies and industries beyond the automotive industry and giving rise to a wide range of products and services.
Think back to the days of hybrid electric vehicles — which combine traditional gasoline engines with electric motor, they never really caught on with consumers and in recent years have been in decline. In fact, more U.S. car buyers are trading in hybrid and electric cars for “gas-guzzling” SUVs, according to car-buying platform Edmunds.com. About 22% of people who have traded in their hybrids and EVs in 2015 bought a new SUV. That’s up from 18.8 per cent the previous year and nearly double the rate of three years ago, according to Edmunds.com.
Despite drivers’ desire to cut their fuel costs — along with greenhouse gas emissions — the tradeoff between the higher price of a hybrid vehicle and the savings on gas has always been difficult to justify.
So… I have my doubts that this primal, human obsession, will be that easily replaceable, and we will be watching Fast & Furious 9 — Autonomous Series, as soon as these theorists seem to think.
