Bob Lutz: Kiss the Good Times Goodbye


PeteK

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Apr 18, 2014
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Kalama, Free part of WA State
The redoubtable Bob Lutz on the future of our favorite obsession. He says, "Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap."

From an article in Automotive News:

http://www.autonews.com/article/20171105/INDUSTRY_REDESIGNED/171109944/industry-redesigned-bob-lutz

Now, over the years I've plied the planet, I've heard a lot of "end of this industry" types of claims like this. Few of them have played out as predicted, and almost none as quickly as predicted. Things that require lots of investment, infrastructure, power, or material stuff don't change quickly for the obvious reasons. In addition, I can't see human driver cars being eliminated that quickly for at least two more reasons: (1) voters would kill any politician that wiped out their major investment before they even paid it off, as well as voters who work across the industries that support the conventional car industry, as well as the banking market that finances them (if you thought the win by Donald Trump in rust belt states last year was an electoral earthquake, it would be a small tremor compared to the election losses after forcing everyone to scrap their cars); and (2) No f---ing way will legislation and the legal environment develop that quickly (I had a conversation with Raj Nair about that at Rally 10, and he thought the legal environment was one of the main, if not the main, hurdles to autonomy).

Decades is more like it.

Will something like this happen eventually? Yeah, but... I'm certain there will be a rather long transition period and things like HOV lanes will transition first, which will provide an incentive for people to buy cars that can operate either autonomously or by human control, to allow them to use the high-speed/high capacity lanes or parts of the infrastructure when they want to and drive when they want to. The "module" companies will be in the mix too, and over time, the market will sort out the winners and losers.

Give Bob credit for putting a controversial vision out there for us to consider. He certainly knows his industry.

Oh, and one other upset: all those light rail projects that big cities squandered billion$ on--obsolete too.
 

2112

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Cobrar

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What does Elon Musk think?? :biggrin
 

AJB

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Elon announced today he is sending his red vehicle to Mars next month.

andy (ajb)
 

PeteK

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Apr 18, 2014
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2112

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Sorry to repeat it, I must've missed the first thread.

No problem, it happens, thought you might want to read that thread.
 

PeteK

GT Owner
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Apr 18, 2014
2,267
Kalama, Free part of WA State
Thanks, I did that too.