kEiThZ
Superstar
This has huge implications. And I get the sense that we'll be grappling with the consequences much sooner than people realize.
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The Coming Disruption of Transport
- Thread starter kEiThZ
- Start date
This has huge implications. And I get the sense that we'll be grappling with the consequences much sooner than people realize.
TRONto
Active Member
I've been arguing a lot of this with people. They don't see it coming. It's all coming!
Only a couple quibbles. While I don't expect oil to drop in price like that next year, could easily happen by 2025. Although I feel like I may have bought my last car, I also expect people will be keeping cars at a much higher level than projected. A car is an extension of the house for many and parents won't want to carry all the children's stuff from car to car.
Only a couple quibbles. While I don't expect oil to drop in price like that next year, could easily happen by 2025. Although I feel like I may have bought my last car, I also expect people will be keeping cars at a much higher level than projected. A car is an extension of the house for many and parents won't want to carry all the children's stuff from car to car.
rbt
Senior Member
It'll be like most major cultural changes; youngest generation will lease on a per-trip basis and the older generations (Millennials and above) will largely continue to purchase vehicle as they always have.
kEiThZ
Superstar
Oil price is around $50. Oilcos thought it would be at closer to $60 now. Their stocks are tanking. If we aren't at peak oil this year, we could be there next year. I don't think it's 2025.
The thing to keep in mind is that oil price is a bit forward looking. And oil stocks much more forward looking. The minute the S-curve starts breaking upwards harder and the future becomes obvious the stocks at least will tank. As it stands now, the stocks of the automakers and some energy companies have dropped.
Agreed. I get Tony Seba's point that policies are adopted on an S-curve. I don't agree that this S-curve is as steep as electric cars. I think we'll see electrification much faster than automation and policy around automation.
Particularly telling on this point was Amazon's order for 100 000 electric delivery vans from Rivian. This is 67% more vehicles than their current global delivery fleet. And they want those delivered by 2024. With 10 000 by 2022. They don't care about autonomy (though they have some driver assist features on there). The economic case for fleets to electrify is already there. And Amazon has kicked off the race....
kEiThZ
Superstar
Millennials are old now. They'll own and drive. Look to the generation that will be completely native to automation and AI to start thinking of transportation as a service. If they've never driven a vehicle, the idea of operating a car will seem as quaint and antiquated as a rotary dial phone today.
MisterF
Senior Member
He makes a compelling argument for his predictions. If true, politics in Alberta are going to get even more toxic over the next decade. Albertans have elevated the oil industry to founding myth status, where environmentalism is practically treasonous. The oil sands, being among the most expensive sources of oil in the world, are only going to get less viable as the driver of the province's economy. The economy will shift away from oil and the province will be fine eventually, but the culture of oil that has taken hold there is going to fight it tooth and nail.
mdrejhon
Senior Member
My city, Hamilton, just started testing driverless cars on the Mountain. They're manned at the moment, but it may just be a matter of time before they are unmanned like some fleets in some USA cities.
Stretch out the timelines from 5 years to 10/20/30 years and what's happening is going to pretty much happen. I don't think it'll happen as quickly as the graphs suggest throughout the whole country. The first city may follow the trends in this YouTube in a mere 5 years (perhaps a sunny Arizona city), it will take much, much longer in most parts of Canada.
Five years later, this is what I expect:
"Look, all these predictions were true!" -- in some cities
"Look, all these predictions were wrong!" -- in other cities
Even though we're already doing a lot of TaaS (Transport As A Service) today.
The selfdriving will take a while to become safe in winter weather here.
-- We tap our Presto-like cards on a spare carshare car and drive it away on the spot (Autoshare, Zipcar, Vrtucar, etc). Unattended rental.
-- We press a button on a pocket computer called a "smartphone" to magically bring us a Uber.
-- Tomorrow, all of these will be unmanned self-driving cars
The new generations doesn't feel the convenience of owning a car like the 20th century teenager pleading for a driver license at Sweet Sixteen. The are pleading for smartphones rather than cars. And they'd rather fondle a smartphone in the backseat of a Uber (or as standee on a New Streetcar). Even an increasing percentage of the Older Generation too. The magic of car ownership isn't as alluring as it used to be, even as I own a car myself too...
I think it is only a matter of time that the driverlessness collides with Ubers & carshare, to make it deliciously more tempting than owning a car. A clean robomaid-serviced car|truck|etc arrives to you, and handles your heavy duty mobility needs more intense than subways, bikes & ridehails. But the driverless stuff is easy in Arizonia, but devilishly hard in Ontario blizzards. So major TaaS disruption may arrive in some cities before others.
Convenience & economic forces will trend towards this. The high cost of self-driving cars and the convenience of carsharing / apphail / etc. For example, even puke becomes a solved problem: The future selfdriving car has cameras that catch the issue & drives the car to a maid service for cleaning & autocharges the last user for the cleaning cost.
One big problem is there's also dystopia scenarios too -- number of cars don't go down, roads/parking still expands, and everybody sends their empty cars away (clogging freeways) to soccermom far-away kids around. THAT is scary and very environmentally unfriendly -- and we'll still need all the parking too.
Stretch out the timelines from 5 years to 10/20/30 years and what's happening is going to pretty much happen. I don't think it'll happen as quickly as the graphs suggest throughout the whole country. The first city may follow the trends in this YouTube in a mere 5 years (perhaps a sunny Arizona city), it will take much, much longer in most parts of Canada.
Five years later, this is what I expect:
"Look, all these predictions were true!" -- in some cities
"Look, all these predictions were wrong!" -- in other cities
Even though we're already doing a lot of TaaS (Transport As A Service) today.
The selfdriving will take a while to become safe in winter weather here.
-- We tap our Presto-like cards on a spare carshare car and drive it away on the spot (Autoshare, Zipcar, Vrtucar, etc). Unattended rental.
-- We press a button on a pocket computer called a "smartphone" to magically bring us a Uber.
-- Tomorrow, all of these will be unmanned self-driving cars
The new generations doesn't feel the convenience of owning a car like the 20th century teenager pleading for a driver license at Sweet Sixteen. The are pleading for smartphones rather than cars. And they'd rather fondle a smartphone in the backseat of a Uber (or as standee on a New Streetcar). Even an increasing percentage of the Older Generation too. The magic of car ownership isn't as alluring as it used to be, even as I own a car myself too...
I think it is only a matter of time that the driverlessness collides with Ubers & carshare, to make it deliciously more tempting than owning a car. A clean robomaid-serviced car|truck|etc arrives to you, and handles your heavy duty mobility needs more intense than subways, bikes & ridehails. But the driverless stuff is easy in Arizonia, but devilishly hard in Ontario blizzards. So major TaaS disruption may arrive in some cities before others.
Convenience & economic forces will trend towards this. The high cost of self-driving cars and the convenience of carsharing / apphail / etc. For example, even puke becomes a solved problem: The future selfdriving car has cameras that catch the issue & drives the car to a maid service for cleaning & autocharges the last user for the cleaning cost.
One big problem is there's also dystopia scenarios too -- number of cars don't go down, roads/parking still expands, and everybody sends their empty cars away (clogging freeways) to soccermom far-away kids around. THAT is scary and very environmentally unfriendly -- and we'll still need all the parking too.
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crs1026
Superstar
I can believe that EV’s are closer than we think, and automated delivery is just around the corner, but I have a hard time reconciling the speaker’s optimism about self guided technology with my morning drive in slush through a road repair zone. While technically doable, our city is years from marking diversions well enough for even a chess-master quality vehicle to figure out !
When one looks at the B737 Max fiasco, I can see regulators taking a very long view of self guiding technology, even if the actual accident rate is a fraction of what it is with human drivers. Liability arguments over those fewer mistakes that self driving vehicles will make will delay rollout I’m sure.
What I can see happening for instance is Amazon and others going to a fully automated night time delivery system - take all those Amazon delivery vehicles off the roads in daytime, and there would be a huge cost/efficiency savings for them, and benefits for the public. Night time is likely not a challenge for the technology, and when the roads aren’t busy there may be more acceptance.
I’m actually doing the numbers right now on whether to replace or life extend our 14-year old grocery getter. Going to one car just isn’t feasible, and electric still just isn’t cheap enough to break even on a lightly used second vehicle. The best option seems to be a used Yaris or Reo sized auto, on the premise that a 3-year old auto will stay reliable (or at least demand less maintenance than our old one) for the next 2-3 years, by which time the ‘disruption’ will be much further along. Buying time may mean never buying a new internal combustion vehicle ever again.
- Paul
When one looks at the B737 Max fiasco, I can see regulators taking a very long view of self guiding technology, even if the actual accident rate is a fraction of what it is with human drivers. Liability arguments over those fewer mistakes that self driving vehicles will make will delay rollout I’m sure.
What I can see happening for instance is Amazon and others going to a fully automated night time delivery system - take all those Amazon delivery vehicles off the roads in daytime, and there would be a huge cost/efficiency savings for them, and benefits for the public. Night time is likely not a challenge for the technology, and when the roads aren’t busy there may be more acceptance.
I’m actually doing the numbers right now on whether to replace or life extend our 14-year old grocery getter. Going to one car just isn’t feasible, and electric still just isn’t cheap enough to break even on a lightly used second vehicle. The best option seems to be a used Yaris or Reo sized auto, on the premise that a 3-year old auto will stay reliable (or at least demand less maintenance than our old one) for the next 2-3 years, by which time the ‘disruption’ will be much further along. Buying time may mean never buying a new internal combustion vehicle ever again.
- Paul
Rainforest
Senior Member
A massive shift to electric vehicles is very likely. A massive reduction in car ownership is less obvious; people can still own cars even if those car become all-electric and self-driving.
Lots of rental companies operate today, and yet a lot of people own cars instead of renting them on the per-trip basis. I'm not sure why that balance will shift dramatically once we go all-electric.
Lots of rental companies operate today, and yet a lot of people own cars instead of renting them on the per-trip basis. I'm not sure why that balance will shift dramatically once we go all-electric.
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Rainforest
Senior Member
The demand for oil will drop several-fold, but not to zero. A fraction of oil is used in petrochemical industry today, and that use will continue. There is no compelling reason to end that, as the petrochemical use can potentially result in zero carbon emission (all carbon stays in the things made of oil, instead of being released as carbon dioxide into the environment).
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kEiThZ
Superstar
I was on exchange in grad school. His cost curves were being used in lectures 3 years ago. He's absolutely not been wrong.
There's some debate whether the curve will bottom out and the rate of improvement and cost reduction will stall. But it's not really happened yet.
And yes, Alberta is f----d. Google car sales for the last three years for any automaker. Down. In a booming economy. Google oil demand. If we're not at peak oil this year, we're close. Consider that between Tesla, Volkswagen, Rivian, we'll see a million EVs shipped in the West in 2021. China is a whole other matter with 40 EV makers. The pivot is coming. And hard. By the time Trans mountain has completed construction it could be a stranded asset. I've always wondered why the Saudis IPO'd Aramco now. Guess we know....
The crazy bit is Tony Seba can be off by years and the impact will still be nuts. Forget AI and self driving. Cost competitive electric cars alone are a massive disruption.
TRONto
Active Member
From what I've read 35% of oil consumption is not transportation based. Definitely not zero
kEiThZ
Superstar
Sure. But the problem for Alberta is that Saudi Arabia can get oil out of the ground for $2/bbl. The last barrel sold on Earth will come from there.
Oh. Saudi also has a ton of sun and silica. And they are one of the world's largest investors in renewables. They are planning on becoming a solar powerhouse. If only for the region....
kEiThZ
Superstar
More like 55% when you count maritime and air. 40-45% is just trucking and light vehicles.
mdrejhon
Senior Member
Electric has nothing to do with it.
Smart driverless does. That's what causes the ownership change.
You know, the really smart driverless cars that can drive itself unattended to you even in the middle of a snowstorm.
That said, the cost of a car as a percentage of a human income will be bigger in 25 years than today, so it's a confluence of factors
- True, real, trusted driverless-ness.
Not today's supervised "Autopilot" stuff (even though even with Autopilot accidents, Autopilot is still >8x safer now than driving yourself) - Rising cost of car ownership as percentage of income
Cars are getting more expensive. Cost of enhancements / safety improvements / going electric / driverless-ness / etc. - Tech that makes going car-free easier
Uber, transit, personal mobility, and soon, self-driving rentals that come straight to your driveway.
We already hit peak car and it is inevitable that the trend will be falling cars-per-capita in North America. We've already fallen from >2-cars average to just about <2-car average per household. 36 years ago, almost half of population got driver license at age 16. Today, that's down to only one-quarter of population.
The question -- for five years from now -- is it a 5% reduction, 10% reduction, 50% reduction, 80% reduction -- that's where the crystal ball becomes cloudy. I just don't think it'll be 80% in only 5 years on an countrywide/aggregate basis -- solving safe AI driving through a moderate driveable blizzard/snowstorm needs to become a solved problem first.
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