The tipping point is just a few years out

MJSfoto1956

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Stanford University futurist Tony Seba spent the last decades studying technological disruptions. He argues that the Electric Vehicle, battery storage, and solar power, along with autonomous vehicles, are a perfect example of a 10x exponential process which will wipe fossil fuels off the market in about a decade.

https://youtu.be/2b3ttqYDwF0
 
I agree that there's an important tipping point very near. However...There was a time when when horses were the engine of choice for transporting people and cargo.

Cars and trucks have displaced them in those jobs, but millions of horses are still maintained. In fact Jay Leno still has several fully functional steam cars.

Electric vehicles are making headway, and that's a good thing. But...the next time there's a war, the air support (fighter jets, cargo planes) will show up using 50% kerosene, and 50% bio-diesel.
 
Anything to make my turbo AWD dino burner less costly to operate.
Although I'd take a PHEV with similar performance any day.
 
For those of you too busy to invest the time to watch the 1 hr video on the upcoming transportation disruption, here is a link to the PDF version of the report: https://www.rethinkx.com/transportation/

Executive Summary:

We are on the cusp of one of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruptions of transportation in history. By 2030, within 10 years of regulatory approval of autonomous vehicles (AVs), 95% of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand autonomous electric vehicles owned by fleets, not individuals, in a new business model we call “transport- as-a-service” (TaaS). The TaaS disruption will have enormous implications across the transportation and oil industries, decimating entire portions of their value chains, causing oil demand and prices to plummet, and destroying trillions of dollars in investor value — but also creating trillions of dollars in new business opportunities, consumer surplus and GDP growth.

The disruption will be driven by economics. Using TaaS, the average American family will save more than $5,600 per year in transportation costs, equivalent to a wage raise of 10%. This will keep an additional $1 trillion per year in Americans’ pockets by 2030, potentially generating the largest infusion of consumer spending in history.

We have reached this conclusion through exhaustive analysis of data, market, consumer and regulatory dynamics, using well-established cost curves and assuming only existing technology. This report presents overwhelming evidence that mainstream analysis is missing, yet again, the speed, scope and impact of technology disruption. Unlike those analyses, which produce linear and incremental forecasts, our modeling incorporates systems dynamics, including feedback loops, network effects and market forces, that better reflect the reality of fast-paced technology-adoption S-curves. These systems dynamics, unleashed as adoption of TaaS begins, will create a virtuous cycle of decreasing costs and increasing quality of service and convenience, which will in turn drive further adoption along an exponential S-curve. Conversely, individual vehicle ownership, especially of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, will enter a vicious cycle of increasing costs, decreasing convenience and diminishing quality of service.
 
MJSfoto1956 said:
Stanford University futurist Tony Seba spent the last decades studying technological disruptions. He argues that the Electric Vehicle, battery storage, and solar power, along with autonomous vehicles, are a perfect example of a 10x exponential process which will wipe fossil fuels off the market in about a decade.
Disruptive? Definitely.

"Wipe fossil fuels off the map?" Not even close. It will be decades before airliners can use electrical energy for long range trips, for example.
 
billvon said:
"Wipe fossil fuels off the map?" Not even close. It will be decades before airliners can use electrical energy for long range trips, for example.

If one bothers to watch the video or read the PDF, his analysis is specifically focused on the economics of automobile/truck transportation. He makes pretty convincing arguments in fact.
 
Sounds like a good time to make a long term investment in airlines, as fossils plummet, leading to cheaper fuel supply. The price of fuel will drop very fast as EV disruption occurs as the daily balance between consumption and production will create an endless overhang of stranded oil biz assets, and buildups of gluts. I believe this is starting to happen this year, with the latest downturn in oil prices.
 
Why will the driverless taxi be so much more successful than the traditional kind that it will all but eliminate private ownership of motorised transportation?
 
chvidgov.bc.ca said:
Sounds like a good time to make a long term investment in airlines, as fossils plummet, leading to cheaper fuel supply. The price of fuel will drop very fast as EV disruption occurs . . .
Definitely true. Which in turn will make gas powered cars much cheaper to operate - and therefore more competitive with EV's.
 
billvon said:
MJSfoto1956 said:
Stanford University futurist Tony Seba spent the last decades studying technological disruptions. He argues that the Electric Vehicle, battery storage, and solar power, along with autonomous vehicles, are a perfect example of a 10x exponential process which will wipe fossil fuels off the market in about a decade.
Disruptive? Definitely.

"Wipe fossil fuels off the map?" Not even close. It will be decades before airliners can use electrical energy for long range trips, for example.

Correct. Electric is not an energy source. It is an energy delivery method. What is the energy source that will be used to charge those electrics?

I agree that autonomous electrics are the likely future. I don't buy into this time frame if for no other reason the investment that will be made in ICE vehicles over the near term. Those vehicles will have a useful lifespan of at least ten years and people will continue to use them.

As autonomous electric taxis become viable and then legal, people will stop replacing their cars that they own. This will take longer than 11 years simply because of the financial obligation that people will have already made to purchase their cars. Also, people have a strong history of spending irrationally on their ICE vehicles. They cannot be depended on to make wise, future looking choices when it comes to vehicle economics. I doubt the transition will even be at the halfway point by 2030.
 
wturber said:
Correct. Electric is not an energy source. It is an energy delivery method. What is the energy source that will be used to charge those electrics?
Yep. Electrification is a good goal but it's only half the solution.
They cannot be depended on to make wise, future looking choices when it comes to vehicle economics. I doubt the transition will even be at the halfway point by 2030.
By 2030 I'd expect to see most cars available with a hybrid, PHEV or EV option. And they will make up more than half of sales, but half of sales won't be pure EV's. PHEV's solve most of the problems of ICE vehicles, are relatively cheap and work everywhere (think Alaska.)

What will drive a lot of this will be performance PHEV's. Tesla made a huge change in the car market by positioning EV's at the top of the luxury/performance market. That hasn't happened with PHEV's yet, but there's no reason that it won't. Indeed, PHEV performance cars would have some pretty big advantages over both regular cars (better/smoother acceleration) and EV's (no need to find a charger all the time.) Consider a truck with three levels of trim - a standard 2WD with ICE engine, a smaller ICE engine plus 4WD PHEV system (faster/better towing and hauling than the base model) and a big ICE engine/PHEV system for long distance towing. And since most trucks are driven most of the time as single passenger, short range commuter vehicles, the PHEV system will still make a very big difference in gas usage.
 
billvon said:
<snip> ... the PHEV system will still make a very big difference in gas usage.

Mostly electric driving could probably cut fossil fuel cost in half or maybe even better. It will also shift where it is burned. Given that I'm now using my ebike for about 80% of my personal transportation and that I own my car outright, I don't stand much to gain from self-driving electric cars. And if people shift more and more toward the use of PHEVs in the near term, that will slow down the shift toward people not owning cars because the relative benefits will be likewise diminished. Younger folks who are buying cars at a slower rate and older folks who are finding driving more difficult will probably be the first large groups to go fully autonomous. I think a lot of the folks in the middle will continue to own cars for the next couple of decades.
 
..."on-demand autonomous electric vehicles owned by fleets"...That futurist is out of touch with the real world. A cheap, older, (possibly electric) car in your driveway is going to stay more useful to most people than a self driving car have to schedule... for a looong time.

The focus of tech in the next 50 years is going to be dealing with the multiple disasters of global warming. Crop failure, extreme weather events, drought, submerged coastal cities, population displacement, etc.
 
classicalgas said:
..."on-demand autonomous electric vehicles owned by fleets"...That futurist is out of touch with the real world. A cheap, older, (possibly electric) car in your driveway is going to stay more useful to most people than a self driving car have to schedule... for a looong time.

Hogwash. The car you don't have to own is by far the most convenient and cost-effective for most people whose lives haven't been designed around the car. Most of the people I know in my neighborhood who own cars, wouldn't own one if they could make a robot taxi appear whenever they needed it instead.
 
Chalo said:
classicalgas said:
..."on-demand autonomous electric vehicles owned by fleets"...That futurist is out of touch with the real world. A cheap, older, (possibly electric) car in your driveway is going to stay more useful to most people than a self driving car have to schedule... for a looong time.

Hogwash. The car you don't have to own is by far the most convenient and cost-effective for most people whose lives haven't been designed around the car. Most of the people I know in my neighborhood who own cars, wouldn't own one if they could make a robot taxi appear whenever they needed it instead.

There's a strong taxi service for over a hundred years but people in rural areas still buy cars, it's convinece that people like until a car can be at someones door instantly it wont work people won't wait when they don't have to now.

The tipping point as you call it will not be equal world wide early adopters will pay the heavy price like for example you don't see many tesla's in the hood there ice cars will continue to thrive until priced out of existence then the instant convinece will have a price that can not be afforded so people will have to use public transport not a driverless car.

Driverless busses yes as there's a theme public transport travels regular routes with lots of passenger throughput as it makes more money a driverless car may help a rich executive fire his driver to have a computer do it even open the door and maybe poor champers too.

Nvidia is pulling gpus out of cars AI after the uber crash so it's tesla now making their own neural chip that's over 10 times faster thanks to employing cpu experts from main stream chip manufacturers but it's got a long road left till level 5 autonomy.
 
[youtube]rsHzaBQsK2s[/youtube]

He fails to point out one simple flaw and that's the used car market price and unless governments that actively crush fuel through tax like France for example they have riots for example the last 8 weekends solid, we need to come to a compromise of some sort so the hard working people are not crushed into poverty lose houses and lifes to use little if any services at all there after.

Another point is 10 years ago or so the goverment give incentive to buy diesel cars with discounted prices compared to its petrol equivalent and it gets at least 20% further per tank for %8 extra cost plus its road tax is £20 vs £125 for petrol or even more for over 2.0 engines so most people in Britain bought up diesel and it became the largest in market when in the early 90's it had only a few percent so it was government driven for tax revenue and to stimulate the car market for tax but it's backfired and if they overpriced diesel them they know people will go off their tits especially when brexit is boiling up.

Ive gotten 100'000 miles with self servicing my car it's cost me very little and still has more life left so im not looking to buy a new car currently the economic situation is grim the bubble is due to pop world wide all this forecasted growth is gonna fall flat on its face till we get out act together with debt that most have not had any benefit from rural areas lack funding will super city's like London thrive and push new agenda while leaving the rest falling behind but Paris is learning there's a rebellion out there that will bite back.

Economic down turn that's not being forecast due to the fact it will panic and stall the stock markets induce a colapse faster and harder whole the bank of England has been secretly taking the piss with the world's money since the 1950's to rebuild Britain after war and we were broke.

Theres a city of london corporation thats within London itself that does not conform to UK law with its own police force and courts very underground seedy old boys back hander brigade where corruption is what's running the fabric of our country so it's gonna be an unpredictable ride.
 
Ianhill said:
Chalo said:
Most of the people I know in my neighborhood who own cars, wouldn't own one if they could make a robot taxi appear whenever they needed it instead.

There's a strong taxi service for over a hundred years but people in rural areas still buy cars, it's convinece that people like until a car can be at someones door instantly it wont work people won't wait when they don't have to now.

Where I live, traditional taxi service has always been a pretty laggy affair, but Uber and Lyft can get a driver at your location in a few minutes. The autonomous equivalent will be more coordinated in schedule and physical distribution, and should therefore be faster to arrive and more responsive to fluctuations in demand.

The wait for a ride that you say people won't tolerate is significantly less than the time it takes to find public parking in many parts of town. Blinkered old people probably think having their own car is still the most convenient option, but many of the young'uns are not fooled.
 
Chalo said:
The wait for a ride that you say people won't tolerate is significantly less than the time it takes to find public parking in many parts of town. Blinkered old people probably think having their own car is still the most convenient option, but many of the young'uns are not fooled.

In addition, your time while commuting is your own since you don't have to drive. I did some analysis of my own and came to the conclusion that Lyft and Uber are simply too costly right now given that I'm already very economical in the way I own and use my car. But I'm hoping that automated, electric versions might be cheaper to hire.
 
I'd love to see the logistics of delivering around 100 thousand people from the valleys down to our local citys between 7-9pm and then return them home again around 3-5pm, then find a use for all them cars inbetween those hours other than grid tied back up that could be done better with a fixed storage design and improved public transport links.

AI cars will replace taxi and buses, train, planes etc id say in 2030 earliest due to the legality of carrying passengers till then passenger cars will be the guinea pig.

I can't wait to see the day a self driving fire engine turns up with robots jumping out into action or paramedic robots in self driving ambulances turn up it's all bollocks where's the compassion or reality in the subject as no one seems to listen to logic it's all what's good from a business perspective, the fact is the world's fuked there's no reversing climate and keep a population growing transported fed clothed and warmed it's going to get damn hot but people want do something unless its a asteroid or a visable close doom when it's in the distant future no one cares it's fake news and then we sleep walk our way to hell no AI car to take me there.

Just maybe by then Ai will be smart enough to survive on it's own and conquer to be our long lasting legacy or maybe we combine like the borg roaming in a collective not arguing over place and power just doing the same thing as we done to earth but on a universal scale for possibly billions of years
 
Self-driving taxis will do nothing to help rush-hour commuting over traditional taxis and only of limited benefit over private vehicles where city-centre parking is a problem.

A lot of self-driving taxis would also be out of use during the graveyard shift. Where will they all be kept? People have driveways for their private cars to keep them close to the point of use.

I'm sure they will eventually replace manned taxis and be used in a similar manner, but I would be surprised if they displace much private ownership as they offer little benefit or capability over a traditional taxi service besides removing the cost and rape-potential of a driver.
 
Ianhill said:
I'd love to see the logistics of delivering around 100 thousand people from the valleys down to our local citys between 7-9pm and then return them home again around 3-5pm,

See, you're back to designing people's lives around personal cars, rather than the other way around. Already, folks in real cities are choosing off-hours commutes to avoid being stuck in traffic for with self-defeating shnooks and their self-imposed problems.

Old people and their arbitrary assumptions will be dead sooner than you think. I'm not young, but I can still see that.

Punx0r said:
I'm sure they will eventually replace manned taxis and be used in a similar manner, but I would be surprised if they displace much private ownership as they offer little benefit or capability over a traditional taxi service besides removing the cost and rape-potential of a driver.

They offer a massively increased potential beyond that-- because each one can serve many more passengers per car, they will obey traffic laws, and they can coordinate with each other to an unprecedented degree.

But the main thing-- from the standpoint of folks who don't take owning a car for granted-- is that you don't have to own one. In the same way that people let go of their land lines once mobile phone service reached price parity, folks who don't tie their personal identity to a car will stop having a car once the cost of autonomous car service reaches parity with the per trip cost of a car. And that will allow radically better allocation of resources.

Transportation patterns will change greatly once the incremental cost per trip is fixed rather than incrementally cheaper the more you drive. Even culture will flourish once a large population escapes the grind of indentured servitude to their cars.
 
The whole concept of personal automobile needs to get down well under 10% of passenger-miles.

USA will be well behind the curve because of the idiotic pro-corporate brainwashing that government is not an efficient provider of services.
 
Ianhill said:
I'd love to see the logistics of delivering around 100 thousand people from the valleys down to our local citys between 7-9pm and then return them home again around 3-5pm, then find a use for all them cars inbetween those hours other than grid tied back up that could be done better with a fixed storage design and improved public transport links.
Light rail to get them to the city; then use "them cars" to take them the last 5 miles. (or bike rental, or scooters, or whatever.)
I can't wait to see the day a self driving fire engine turns up with robots jumping out into action or paramedic robots in self driving ambulances turn up
Won't happen. Emergency vehicles have to respond in . . . emergencies where other things have gone wrong.
 
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