IEEE Future Directions
Related Articles
On Monday, July 9th, I will be giving a keynote at Automotive 2018 conference in Milan, a conference where many technical aspects will be presented by several researchers from around the world. My presentation will not be on technologies, I give it for granted that we have, and will have, the required technology to manufacture and operate self driving cars in the next two decade. The question I will address is on the impact that such a transformation may bring about. Something that in my experience many researchers are not considering. They are working hard to move forward without realising that the direction will be taking us over a precipice.
It has already happened in the past and we are better off today, so it might be that we will be better off once we will fall from the cliff tomorrow. However, as it happened in the past a few will get hurt.
So let me start by looking back, a hundred and thirty years ago. London, New York and many other cities were clogged by horse carriages. In London there were 50,000 horses (producing every day some 85,000 litres of urine and 790 tonnes of manure!). A carriage, including the horse, cost around 50$, much cheaper than it used to be just 40 years before (in 1870 the cost was around 150$, three times higher) and much much cheaper than those first cars that were produced by artisans (850$).
The average speed was not bad, around 18mph, particularly if you compare that with today’s average speed of vehicles in London (11 mph during peak hours).
That form of transportation required a well tuned infrastructures with stables (providing shelter, replacement and hay) and technicians to produce horseshoes (blacksmiths) and fit them on the hooves (farriers).
Around 1900 very few predicted that cars will eventually displace horse-carriages (cars were too expensive, they broke down too often and the roads were not good for cars). They felt cars would remain a curiosity, with very few rich people able to afford them. Indeed, it took almost 50 years to have the horses replaced by car and guess what: today horses are for rich people to enjoy them.
In the process two things happened: the horse-supporting infrastructure faded away (and the few stables left became very expensive losing the economy of scale) with significant job losses and a new infrastructure, with new players was created fuelled by an expanding market that supported many more jobs.
The 50,000 horses serving London in 1900 have been replaced today by 2.5 million cars, a 50 fold expansion.
The change brought by shifting form horses to cars was fuelled by technology advances and impacted the whole society, generated a new culture and created today’s world.
The shift from cars to self driving cars (and more generally self driving vehicles) will create a major disruption, over a shorter period of time, with bigger impact on culture, way of living, business and jobs.
I’ll discuss them in the following posts.
