It’s becoming more apparent every day, the motorcycle parked in your garage is nothing more than a fossil fuel recreational vehicle, along with the internal combustion powered car, truck or boat. With automation removing the driver from practically every self propelled vehicle, it looks like our days of being in control are numbered. If electric driverless cars are all you notice, you’re missing what’s happening all around and it’s happening fast.
Look beyond electric cars and the inroads they’re making. Those massive mining dump trucks that already run without a driver are converting to electric power. Tesla is going to unveil their electric semi tractor later this month, but Cummins already made their electric powertrain debut with their AEOS semi demonstrator, which includes technology for vehicle to vehicle communication including capabilities for platooning on the highway with other trucks. Electric transit buses will be here very quickly in large numbers. Even airplanes are climbing onto the electric bandwagon, though I think that transition will take longer, but they’ve had autopilot for a long time. When we look back, not many years from now, the transition to driverless electric vehicles will seem to have come, as Ernest Hemingway famously once said, “Gradually, then suddenly.”
Rio Tinto, the Australian mining company that runs those automated dump trucks, just had the first run of their automated freight train for carrying iron ore. Don’t forget the Case self driving farm tractors, too. If you think there is a long time yet before you’ll see the impact in your daily life, think again.
The combination of electric power for more and more vehicles and the introduction of self-driving technology is accelerating. I think it was the advance of electric truck technology that finally made me realize how quickly one breakthrough after another was hitting the road. Several auto manufacturers have announced their entire lineup will either be electric or have an option for electric power in a relatively short time frame.
Internal combustion still has a long time to run, but our entire idea of what a recreational vehicle is may have to change. In the future, just driving any vehicle ourselves will be considered recreation. Powering it with fossil fuel may become the exception for special cases rather than the rule. So, welcome to the brave new world of the FFRV, the Fossil Fuel Recreational Vehicle, followed soon after with restrictions on where they can operate.
GenWaylaid says
I have conflicted opinions on the eventual dominance of autonomous cars. On the one hand, I’d certainly prefer to share the road with sober, attentive, law-abiding robots over today’s drivers. On the other hand, if a driver’s license is no longer a necessity then states may make them prohibitively expensive just to raise revenue.
With any luck human driving and riding will remain legal. Autonomous vehicles still have to deal with unpredictable pedestrians and bicyclists, so on surface streets human-operated vehicles will pose only an incremental additional hazard. Humans may lose the freeways to autonomous high-speed platooning, though.
The transition away from fossil fuels is a separate but simultaneous matter. Consider just how much infrastructure goes into extracting, refining, transporting, and selling fossil fuels today. Most of that industry has very thin margins, especially gas stations.
Gas stations have been in slow decline for decades now. Unless they can adapt by adding plugs, then even a 50% reduction in fossil-fueled vehicles could trigger an industry collapse. At that point, we’re back to the early days of motoring, when gasoline was a specialty product that was hard to find.
I think motorcycles will survive as a niche hobby, even if they’re all electric and banned from the freeways. Hopefully, unlike horses, they will remain relatively affordable.
Jason says
I predict that driving will remain legal but insurance companies will price it out of existence as the risk pool shrinks.
GenWaylaid says
Maybe, but the big insurers write policies for all kinds of risky activities. Arguably the availability of self-driving cars would improve the risk pool by removing anyone who doesn’t really want to drive. Best case scenario, driving tests get tougher and the overall driving environment gets safer.
The DMV still worries me, though. It’s not like they’d lay off government employees just because their business shrank dramatically. That’s the same cost spread over fewer drivers.
Then there’s the cost of road repairs. Several states now have put large registration fees on electric cars, typically $100 to $250 a year. That’s way more than the typical owner of an equivalent gas car would pay in fuel taxes. I expect everybody will get stuck with these fees eventually.
Police departments won’t be able to support themselves on traffic tickets for long, either. Tickets could get wildly expensive for a while until they find a different source of revenue.
Jason says
I don’t see autonomous cars reducing the number of cars on the road. I’ve heard the predictions that we will all just ride around in autonomous taxis but the problem remains the same as today. Rush hour determines the number of cars required. As long as the majority of people have to go to work or school at the same time every weekday the number of cars required stays the same. To reduce the number we would have to start car-pooling and people show no more sign of wanting to do that today then they did 20 or 30 years ago. I don’t see how replacing a driver with a robot will make sharing a car with strangers any more appealing.