Former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has a vision of the future.
And it doesn’t include that monstrous 3 car garage you just built onto the front of your house.
From Automotive News:
It saddens me to say it, but we are approaching the end of the automotive era.
The auto industry is on an accelerating change curve. For hundreds of years, the horse was the prime mover of humans and for the past 120 years it has been the automobile.
Now we are approaching the end of the line for the automobile because travel will be in standardized modules.
The end state will be the fully autonomous module with no capability for the driver to exercise command. You will call for it, it will arrive at your location, you’ll get in, input your destination and go to the freeway.
On the freeway, it will merge seamlessly into a stream of other modules traveling at 120, 150 mph. The speed doesn’t matter. You have a blending of rail-type with individual transportation.
Then, as you approach your exit, your module will enter deceleration lanes, exit and go to your final destination. You will be billed for the transportation. You will enter your credit card number or your thumbprint or whatever it will be then. The module will take off and go to its collection point, ready for the next person to call.
This might be the culmination of technology, of overpopulation, the consumption of natural resources, the sinking income of the middle-class family, or of the dialogue of how mass transit should occur. Any of these arguments can be at least made well enough to make a rebuttal require some skull-sweat.
This will be interesting – and not necessarily a bad thing. Just a different thing.
And what happens when your train hits a moose?
