“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” - Henry Ford
While this quote may never have been said by the great inventor, it still speaks volumes about the transformative and unpredictability of huge leaps in technology. Thus, while we look back at the “old days” when the horse was the only conceivable mode of transportation, we commonly admit two perspectives.
First, we admit that it must have been difficult to predict the advent of the automobile. Folks had used horses for individual transportation since antiquity. Steam engines replaced mass transit over long distances, but surely a coal engine for an individual would be inconceivable.
On the other hand, we view the eventual transition to the car as an ultimate necessity. If Henry Ford hadn’t managed to turn the car mainstream, someone else surely would have. The technology was available, the form factor had already been generally proven successful. In short, the conditions were ripe for revolution– someone just had to deliver on the promise.
Fast forward to the modern age, and we can see a similar climate emerging for the autonomous automobile.
And indeed, future generations will look back at this shift as a simple inevitability. How could it be otherwise? More and more of our lives have gone from slightly automated to heavily automated. We are trusting technology with a significantly greater level of control over our more monotonous tasks. What, indeed, is more monotonous than your daily commute?
This article does a great job of identifying one place where autonomy in automobiles will likely find an early niche: trucking. But it won’t stop there. Indeed nearly everything that currently requires a car, or a truck, plane, train, bus, or boat, for that matter, can and will benefit from some level of automation. Most of these forms of transportation will likely be fully automated in the next few decades. In short, the minivan will likely be obsolete before I’ll be old enough and ‘dad’ enough to buy one.
Quite soon, driving one’s own car will be just as much of a novelty as riding a horse.
The last car I had to my name was a leased Hyundai Elantra. It got me around the crowded and smoggy streets of Los Angeles for three years while I attended undergrad at USC. At the end of my lease I returned it to a dealership up here in San Francisco, and have been without a car for the last year. What’s more, assuming I remain here, I don’t see much of a need to purchase a car for the next few years. With on-demand car services like Lyft taking care of my weekly needs and rental car services like GetAround handling any larger trips I’d like to take, my need for a car of my own begins to dwindle.
Thus it seems readily apparent I may never drive the next car I buy. And soon neither will you. Some self-proclaim that they love driving. I do not doubt that they will continue to find opportunities to drive themselves around, but it will become significantly rarer. It will, indeed, become a novelty. Just like riding horses.
