Transport as a service: Self-driving cars could change your life within six years
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| PHOTO: Tony Seba believes "the whole concept" of individual car ownership will end by 2024. (Getty Images: Chesky_W) |
Tony Seba, Stanford lecturer, author and self-described thought leader, is not one to prognosticate lightly.
Seba — a "chief disruptor" with over 20 years experience in venture capital, business entrepreneurship and clean energy technologies — has a message for commuters tired of traffic jams.
Seba predicts that by 2024, the whole concept of individually owned cars will be obsolete. The internal combustion engine will cease to be competitive with electric motors.
Car dealerships will cease to exist. Global demand for oil will plummet, and so will its price. And by 2030, 95 per cent of US auto miles will be travelled by autonomous, on-demand electric vehicles.
The automotive and oil industries as we now know them will collapse.
Seba calls this new paradigm Transport as a Service, or TAAS. Essentially, you're going to use the car like you do today, but, as with existing ride-hailing or car-sharing services, vehicles will be booked or hailed through an app.
Cost-conscious consumers will be able to carpool, halving or quartering their transport costs.
And he predicts that this shift — from ownership to access — will be quite orderly as revolutions go.
The cost of disruption
History is littered with examples of innovations not catching on despite technological superiority or greater utility.
The Iron Age had functioning water mills, Da Vinci the helicopter, Nikolai Tesla his direct current motor, Toshiba the HD DVD.
For Seba, the advent of the autonomous electric vehicle has an edge that these did not: it is drastically cheaper.
A Toyota Corolla costs about an eighth of the amount of a Tesla Model S, but thinking in terms of one-off purchases is irrelevant to TAAS: for a fleet of autonomous vehicles the key factors are cost per kilometre travelled and lifetime of post-sale use.
In the RethinkX model, efficiencies in battery storage and the viability of vehicle artificial intelligence are assumed, and leave the customers of the near future with a clear decision.
The average American household spends $10,000 on car upkeep per year — a figure Seba reckons would be cut by 90 per cent under TAAS.
"People love cars — but those same people love money more," Seba says.
Australia 'should be competitive' in autonomous vehicles
South Perth, Darwin and New South Wales, have all trialled or started trials of autonomous vehicles.
"It's a space where we should be competitive," Travis Waller, director of the Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation at the University of New South Wales, says.
"Google Maps started here. The software that runs signalised intersections was designed here in the 70s."
Professor Waller also believes the TAAS model is coming, though he's doubtful about Seba's world-changing timeframe. Most manufacturers, he says, are targeting 2025 for autonomous deployment.
"They're looking more at campus environments, or airports," Professor Waller says.
Well-mapped environments, in other words, with relatively low traffic loads.
"But completely autonomous, and completely functional," he says.
Autonomous systems still struggle with irregular interactions — such as cyclists — and Professor Waller suggests they're likely to be deployed in a more limited capacity, at least at first.
But he thinks on thing we're likely to start seeing autonomous-only lanes soon, so that drivers are introduced to the concept.
"Even if there is no safety or risk, we have to deal with perception and people's comfort," he says.
Car ownership 'not logical' in cities
At a certain point in Australian history, not owning a car would have seemed as unthinkable as not producing one.
But for Mike Ramsay, a research director at technology research firm Gartner, owning a car has never really made sense.
There's public transport, for one thing. Parking is expensive and rare.
But Mr Ramsay is not convinced by the prospect of a revolution within the next decade.
"I think all things in automotive move glacially," he says.
There are cultural barriers to the uptake of autonomous vehicles — in a recent Gartner survey, some 55 per cent of respondents said they would not ride in an autonomous vehicle.
Most said they would ride in a semi-autonomous vehicle, provided there was a manual override function.
Mr Ramsey laughs at the problem this poses for a computer interface.
"How many times have you been in a cab where you've said to the driver, 'Just drop me off here, not to the destination'," he asks.
"Can you communicate that to a robot?"
How the change is likely to happen
Mr Ramsay believes the next five years will be a slow march, where cars gradually come to resemble "rolling mobile phones".
Facets of autonomous technology — diagnosing engine problems, rerouting through traffic, guided reverse parking — will become standard.
The internal combustion engine is on its way out — though Mr Ramsey gives it 30 to 40 years, rather than Seba's estimate of five.
The biggest question — one that Seba's model is quiet on — is who will manufacture the vehicles.
Tesla may have a charismatic leader with an unlimited tolerance for risk — but they sold some 80,000 cars in 2016, compared to the 10 million of Toyota or Volkswagen.
"Will Google buy one of these companies?" Mr Ramsay asks.
"So far, [Google] have been hesitant to do that, but if the technology is good enough and there's a demand that's strong enough they may change their mind."
There's a slide that Seba likes to start his lectures with: a black and white photo of an Easter parade on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
The year is 1900, and the scene is flush with suited revellers. What's most striking is what isn't there: cars. Instead, the avenue is filled with horses.
In a few short years — and to the disbelief of many — the Model T Ford went into production and livestock became a rarity in the city.
"The same things were said back then that are now being said about cars," Seba says.
via ABC.net.au
