Autonomous Vehicle Day

In 2016, Elon Musk “infamously” announced that the newly introduced Version 2 of the Tesla Full Self Driving would allow a Tesla to drive from the Tesla factory in Fremont California to Times Square in New York without intervention.  

This announcement was nearly 6 years ago, and shortly after I bought my first Tesla.  

This drive has not yet occurred, and shows little immediate sign of taking place.   Getting a car to be able to drive itself fully autonomously is clearly not as simple as it might have appeared!

But, inevitably, this will happen.  

What will be the effect on society and specifically on the motor trade.  

When cars are self-driving, there are several effects, some immediate and some more long term.  

One of the major threats is to the Taxi Driver.  Autonomous Taxis are logical. This will drive the cost per mile of taxis down as the driver is a substantial proportion of the cost. The taxi driver will be redundant quite quickly.  

This reduced cost of travel by taxi will then reduce the levels of car ownership in our towns and cities, as it will be cheaper and more convenient to simply call on a taxi when required rather than own your own car.  

However, long term, the whole ownership model for cars will change.   The reason is easy to see. At the moment, a car spends much of its time parked – at home, at work or in car parks and only a small percentage of its time being driven. Autonomy leads to car sharing (an extension of the autonomous taxi).  This will mean your car will take you to work and then rather than park all day, it will go off and do other journeys – earning income for the car owner.

This means less cars on the road…  so less car sales.  But, mileages will be massively higher, offsetting this a little but also increasing maintenance costs for individual cars.  

Socially, we will not require driveways, or anywhere to park the car, as they will be in motion most of the time. City centre car parks will be put back to other uses – maybe city parks. Environmentally, this will add more “green” to the landscape.  

It is likely that this will be a major shift in the motor trade. The Car manufacturers may become “taxi” operators, earning money by the mile rather than simply selling their products. Car dealers would be vastly different with a higher requirement for safety maintenance but lower sales of cars.  

The question is whether this will ever happen as described, or if so when? 10 years? 20 ? 50 ? more?