When US fuel economy standards come into line with the rest of the world’s. European manufacturers have dumped V12s for V8s, V8s for V6s, V6s for in-line fours, and in-line fours for three-cylinder jobs. Turbochargers and direct injection are replacing cylinders and displacement.
Ford is following suit with its EcoBoost engine line (though apparently many of its economy claims are inflated). GM seems to be developing a similar range for the US market.
It’s important to bear in mind that CAFE standards apply to a manufacturer’s entire range as a group. So FCA can sell things like the Hellcat and Demon in tiny numbers, because it is offsetting their earth-destroying-ness with millions of econoboxes.
The smart money right now is that the (fairly near) future of automobiles is electric self-driven fleet vehicles.
So, just like no one cares how many horsepower there are in the taxi, train, bus, or plane they take, no one will care about most cars either. Automobiles will be designed to maximize for safety, comfort, and economy.
There will certainly be a small group of die-hard hot-rodders, but the mass market will have moved on.
Realizing that predictions are hard (especially about the future) - I keep seeing this one and, while it seems economically rational - it seems like a huge change in society.
I own a car that is used, on average, about 60 minutes a day, so most of the time it isn’t needed or could be used by someone else. I need it between 6:45 and 7:15 am to get to work, and an additional 30 minutes sometime between 4:30 and 5:30 to get home. The problem is that most of the rest of the people in the KC metro need a vehicle at those same times.
This gives you some tremendous surge problems that I’m not seeing an easy solution to. I’d be willing to shift my hours by 30 minutes (or more) to enable ride-sharing, but I’ve got a professional job where I’ve got a lot of flexibility - someone working an hourly gig with an 8-5 time-clock isn’t going to be able to do that.
Does it? I mean, right now, all those people who need their cars to commute need their own cars. And most of them drive by themselves.
So, worst case, in a driverless fleet future, we’re only going to need as many cars as the number used at peak commute, which is fewer cars than we have now. And if the algorithms are even moderately good at routing and matching commuters, they’ll get 2-3 people in a car for most of that trip, cutting the number of cars needed substantially.
Plus, your commute probably doesn’t take 30 minutes anymore if there are 1/3 as many cars on the road.
There are a lot of efficiency gains just laying around for the taking.
But ISTM that the question is can the overall efficiency gains override the personal costs - this seems like a ‘commons’ issue to me.
You’ve got to convince the average commuter that it is in her interest to get up 45 minutes time earlier to catch a shared ride to work, arriving at work 30 minutes before she needs to be there. After work, she waits 45 minutes for a car going more-or-less her way, and then (since she’s the last one dropped off of three passengers) has a 10 minute longer ride (reduced because of less traffic, but increased because the car gets off the interstate twice to drop someone off in a neighborhood).
And of course, if there is a production problem and I have to work until 7:00 - how long do I have to wait for a car to come get me in the semi-sketchy neighborhood my company is located in (so more likely that there aren’t cars just waiting around that late), as opposed to hopping in my car to finally get home?
The times are obviously made up and slanted to make my point, but you’re going to have a lot of social inertia to overcome.
The times are so far divorced from reality that they’re not really useful.
You can already get an Uber in < 5 minutes almost anywhere in urban or suburban America, with a relatively small fleet driven by humans. If you increase the number of cars and the number of people using them, the logistics will get better. This is a network effect problem.
You don’t need to get up 45 minutes early to catch a car. You get up at the normal time, and schedule a car to come at the time you want to leave. Maybe a few minutes early to deal with picking up a few other passengers. You gain back that time and more, though, because you can use the driving time productively, rather than paying attention to the road.
All that’s needed to make the vast majority of commuters switch from owning and driving their own cars is the same logistics technology we have now and a drop in price. And self-driving fleet vehicles will be so much cheaper than personal ownership. The vast majority of people ar not going to pay a premium to deal with traffic rather than sitting in the back of a car doing whatever.
Yes. Performance cars are already a tiny fraction of the automobile market. I’m sure gasoline-powered cars will live on as a hobby, loved by a small community of enthusiasts who maintain classic cars or buy new ones from specialty manufacturers. Even Elon Musk owns two gasoline-powered cars, a Jaguar E-type and a Ford Model-T.
Whether they will continue to be allowed on public roads is a separate question though. People who own horses don’t ride them on highways anymore. Same will eventually happen to gasoline-powered, non-autonomous cars.
I agree that it is a network effect issue, I’m just not as optimistic as you about getting the network started.
And I don’t know that my times are that unreasonable (I don’t think Uber response times are necessarily the model here). I live fairly close to major highways, but even so, if someone were to pick me up it would add at least 10 minutes to the trip. A third passenger doubles that (or more, if they live farther off the highway). And that assumes we’ve got the same destination. If I’m first into the car and last off, 20 minutes of added time to pick up Thing 2 and Thing 3 at their houses, and 15 minutes out of my way to drop them off at their work doesn’t seem unreasonable. And of course 2 and 3 are getting to their jobs earlier than normal because I need to be at mine at 8:00.
Now it’s possible that people and jobs cluster more than I think, but my numbers there don’t seem out of line.
And of course, there is the start up cost - someone has to get the initial vehicles out there. And the initial prices have to be such that current car owners will use the service, since people will be loathe to give up their personal vehicles until the driver-less fleet shows it can meet their needs with high reliability.
Amazon seems to like losing money for years, so they might be a candidate for trying this.
I don’t know about America, but horses on roads are a common sight in the UK. You can take a horse and carriage on a dual carriageway but not a motorway. Cite. The former can be overridden if there’s a ‘No horse-drawn vehicles’ sign.
I’m sure you’ll be able to take a solo self driving car for your commute. Are you willing to save $6 for a total of 10 minute delay (or whatever)? My guess is that services and prices will be available for different levels of service, ranging from the convenience and price of a traditional bus to today’s cabs and ubers.
I also think that it won’t be a car exiting a highway or major road to divert through a neighborhood to pick up an extra passenger, but one of the cars driving down your street anyway, or the nearest neighborhood feeder street. So if a car with one of your neighbors in it, driving by your house anyway, stops for you, then drops the neighbor off at a place you pass anyway on the way to your office, the delay will be minimal.
Those are my hopes for the future. Fully autonomous vehicles might always be 5-10 years away (and after dropping of passengers, they drive to the fusion plant to recharge…)
Why would you have a self driving 4 seater car for people commuting to work? If we truly get self driving fleet cars they would be mostly single seater vehicles.
By the time self-driving cars become fairly common, I strongly suspect that many, perhaps most, of those inflexible jobs will be fully automated.
Probably some of the rest will become work-from-home. There are a LOT of jobs right now could be done from home if the companies were willing to change their procedures.
They’re common in certain areas of the US. I grew up in Amish country and they drive their buggies on the highways. The only place they can’t drive them is on freeways, which have minimum speed limits.
I think people and jobs cluster a lot more than you think.
I live in a fairly standard suburban density neighborhood, and there are about 2000 people within 5 minutes drive of me. I’d be pretty surprised if there weren’t at least one or two that work either within a block or two of my office or on the route with less than a few minutes deviation.
And that’s without even considering the hub and spoke model. You could always pick people up from their houses and bring them to a more central distribution point, then do the same thing at the other. This adds a lot of wasted time when you need to have scheduled routes, but in an on-demand system, it’s pretty minor.
I also think you’re underestimating the time savings of not having to drive.
If your old commute was 30 minutes and you had to pay attention to traffic, a new automated commute that lasts 40 minutes, on which you can take a nap, read a book, work on your laptop, etc. seems like a major upgrade to me, not a 10-minute downgrade.