Imagine a world where your commute, your trip to the grocery store, your weekend getaway isn’t powered by a car in your garage, but by an on-demand autonomous electric vehicle.
A world where owning a car could be a novelty rather than a necessity.
How technology is driving the electric vehicle revolution
Renowned technology researcher and futurist Tony Seba, in a recent episode of The Driven podcast, explained how a combination of technologies, specifically autonomous driving, electric vehicles and on-demand transportation, are converging to create a future that could significantly reduce our reliance on personal cars.
But are we ready to embrace this vision of the future, or are we still stuck seeing it as a cleaner version of the current system?
Seba, who has previously made surprisingly accurate predictions about falling battery costs and the scale of the solar revolution, is unimpressed with how most analysts view electric vehicle (EV) disruption.
“They see her as a ‘clean caterpillar’ instead of a new butterfly,” Seba said. They see every internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle simply replaced by an EV, a one-to-one transition. That’s not how disruption happens, according to Seba.
Breaking the myth of “one is for one”.
By the time we get to level four autonomous technology and it’s approved by regulators, Seba says we’ll have what’s called “transportation as a service” (TAAS). Imagine a fleet of self-driving electric vehicles available at your fingertips, like your current Uber or Lyft, but without the human driver.
When this becomes a reality, the cost per transportation mile could drop 10-20 times. You might start to wonder why you need a car.
“Most people who can barely pay their bills, it won’t make sense to own a car,” says Seba. Indeed, the math is compelling. Spending $50,000 over the next five years to own a car, or just $100 a month for a transportation-as-a-service subscription?
The impact on global car sales
A consequence of this change, according to Seba, will be a significant reduction in the need for new cars. Electric vehicles, with their longer lifespans (around 500,000 miles compared to 140,000 miles for ICE vehicles), will need to be replaced less frequently.
Seba predicts that this could cause the global car market to fall by up to 75%.
“In 10 years, you’ll only need one EV for 10 gas cars,” he says.
A new energy landscape
In addition to transforming the way we get around, the rise of electric vehicles combined with renewable energy will also dramatically alter our energy landscape.
Currently, our transportation energy system is centralized, controlled by a handful of multinational oil companies. The future? Think decentralized and local.
“In the 20th century we saw an increase in centralization. The car essentially meant we needed oil…” says Seba. “What we will see starting in the 2030s is just the opposite.”
Seba envisions a future where core sectors of the economy are based on abundant, low-cost, localized distributed production.
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