I’ve mostly ignored self-driving cars except for occasionally peering into a Google Maps vehicle. I’ll admit, I’ve been working off three long-ago formed biases.
- My computer degree in 1875 had a focus in Artificial Intelligence, and in particular, vision (as opposed to image or voice). Back then the Roomba was a fantasy and the idea of the ‘vision’ required for self-driving cars was on par with Star Trek transporter technology. I may have unconsciously locked into “not in my lifetime”.
One of the greatest movies (and soundtracks) ever is “Singles”. One of the main characters is trying to evangelize a SuperTrain that people will take instead of driving to work. From his girlfriend to the Governor, the main argument-against (and eventual fatal blow) is the simple “people love their cars”. It comes full circle at the end when she show up at our hero’s home with
Her: I was absolutely nowhere near your neighborhood and thought I’d stop by
Him: What took you so long? (cue tears)
Her: I got stuck in traffic.- A great friend of mine from college who studied Industrial Engineering was explaining traffic patterns to me when I was guest working in Silicon Valley in the late ’90s. When I asked why they didn’t widen 101, he said traffic would expand to fill the capacity…people love to drive, and they will until it hits an annoyance level and then they consider mass transit…expand capacity and drivers will rejoin until the annoyance level reaches the earlier equilibrium.
So a lot of my self-driving car perspective (more shallow than my other barely reasoned perspectives) was “solution looking for a problem.”
With the Google/Waymo/Uber litigation coming to a head this past week I decided to become at least slightly more conversant in the market opportunity and futurist prognostications and, probably to the surprise of no one with a better-than-fifth-grade education, there might be something to this whole driverless-transport thing.
In no order, here are the seeds that I came across that have me beginning to wonder about the big business opportunity here, or just the coolness to come.
- A nationwide network of charging stations isn’t the big thing, it’s a drive thru that swaps your battery for a charged one. I remember in late ’97 on a plane from NY to SF and the guy next to me pulls out his phone and the battery is dead. “Let me help,” I said, and since we both had the same Motorola StarTac, I just traded him one of my extra fully-charged batteries and thought ‘there’s a business here…capital intensive but there’s something here’. There’s a business in battery swapping.
- Cars won’t have to be built to withstand the crashes of modern traffic, so they will get lighter and need less power. No driver controls also means incredible simplification of production which means cheaper.
- Charged cars are like portable power stations and could change how we think about our power grid.
- Automated (and connected) cars constantly collect information about their own use and the environment around them and the sale of that data could make a cheap vehicle even cheaper.
- Parking structures will become something better — a quick Googling tells me there are between 100MM and 2B parking spots in the US
- Multi-modal transport could become seamless — why couldn’t the ride that picks me up at home slide onto the Acela track and go from 60mph to 200mph?
- There could be incredible shocks to employment segments — steel, car manufacturing, petroleum, car repair, road building/repair…. — that employ a lot of people, triggering a spike in unemployment and the secondary effects on inflation, defaults in vehicle and student loans…lots of social/work contract norms in flux.
- The redesign might also include the loss of the trunk in its current form as a rarely-accessed storage device. Car add-ons for vacation or even grocery shopping are deployed as-needed.
- Much like Uber is soaking up excess vehicle capacity, the supply chain/logistics business could tap excess transport capability and crush anyone with legacy pension/union constraints (especially the Post Office). Mail package delivery could move to mostly overnight as self-driving capacity sits idle.
- Teen boys will no longer aspire to the Black Trans-Am of the Smokey and the Bandit movies. Wait, that already happened? Okay, dudes trying to “compensate for something” will no longer buy red sports cars.
- When cost, comfort and timing of commutes changes, so will where people live. Maybe you can live in CT and work in Boston much like you would work near Grand Central now.
- Privacy law (and lawyers) will be booming as everything is now tracked.
- No more DUI
- First response will be redefined
- More people will participate in off-road racing to meet our emotional connection to driving
- Maybe I will have a “pod” of my own that gets picked up with me in it. I want one with a Firebird on it (like the Smokey and the Bandit Trans-Am)
When asked what single invention I think would most benefit society my top current choice is “free power”. As I noodle on the Star Trek utopia of free basic needs, I think free power is the accelerant. This driverless thing could also be a big jump forward.
I have now moved from oblivious to early-thoughtful and will continue to progress. I don’t really care how the Google/Waymo/Uber thing works out, but despite my heavy bias for giving founders great latitude, Travis has used up all the good will available.
Still on my “there’s nothing valuable there” list is blockchain and its offspring cryptocurrency.