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GM's announcement yesterday of the discontinuation of many of their car models, the layoff of a lot of employees, and the eventual shutdown of many of their plants indicates the pending seismic shift of the car landscape. GM is actually making good money and while some of their models (many manufacturers are dealing with this) are having sales slowdowns, the real reason as indicated by Mary Barra is the car world is changing rapidly.
I read an article recently that when fully autonomous drone cars come online (and it's going to happen faster than most of us think), people will no longer buy cars. They will buy subscription services for themselves and/or their families. They will open their smartphone and tell the car app they need to be at work at 7am. They will get an immediate response to be outside at 6:27am or whatever and they will walk out to an open sliding door, step in, and the car will silently zip away under electric power and navigate itself to the work destination.
At the same time, your wife and children are home. Your wife gets an alert to confirm both children are off to school (there will be legal issues on age, liability, etc. that will need to be resolved, but security measures can be put in place) at the same daily time of 8:30am. Your wife indicates yes and the app says to have children outside at 8:16am. Wife then decides she wants to go to Costco and opens the app again and selects it as one of her preset favorite destinations and scrolls to indicates a desired time of arrival of 9am. Due to her subscription level not being higher and the high demand during that time, the app replies back and says there is a 9:15 arrival slot available and she checks okay.
A richer family down the street has bought their own drone car. It's a Porsche-made brand and has a lot of fancy interior upgrades like plush carpet, high end nappa leather and even a setting to bypass speed limits and acceleration levels in limited situations. It's called "thrill mode." The Porsche drone can do 0-60 in 2.3 seconds in the right conditions when this mode is selected. Anyway, this drone can be pre-scheduled to take Dad to work, kids to school, and then Mom to her part-time attorney job and then to the spa in the afternoon, all with the same car. No more two or 3 car families needed. In the event of an overlap, Porsche has an additional option of flex scheduling where a company-owned drone Porsche will come by and pick up someone at the family residence when the family owned drone is otherwise unavailable. This family is wealthy and really doesn't like riding in a shared drone car. Plus, their Porsche drone is red so it stands out and makes them look cool to the neighbors. haha.
So, why is all this going to happen and fast? This article I read (wish I could remember where) said profits per vehicle is going to go up dramatically for the automaker when they own their own fleet and do subscription services since one car can service a lot of subscriptions. More and more younger kids don't want to mess with owning and maintaining a car anyway, especially those that live in dense urban areas where parking is very expensive. So, to keep the profit train churning, all automakers are working very heavily towards this new model for vehicle sales. I also read that Honda and GM are working together on this initiative which I found interesting. Here is a link to that big partnership with GM Cruise LLC:
Anyway, where does that leave us driving enthusiasts? It will become a hobby of sorts where we were park our old, non-autonomous vehicles at driving tracks/parks/schools where we can swing by on the weekend or after work/school to go flog our cars with steering wheels and brake and throttle pedals around a track. It will become something akin to what horse riding is today. A very fun hobby for those that love riding horses, except we will be in control of our loud, internal combustion engine cars with manual controls. The younger generations will roll their eyes at us, but once they taste the freedom of controlling a powerful machine with our hands and feet, many of them will appreciate the art form.
I read an article recently that when fully autonomous drone cars come online (and it's going to happen faster than most of us think), people will no longer buy cars. They will buy subscription services for themselves and/or their families. They will open their smartphone and tell the car app they need to be at work at 7am. They will get an immediate response to be outside at 6:27am or whatever and they will walk out to an open sliding door, step in, and the car will silently zip away under electric power and navigate itself to the work destination.
At the same time, your wife and children are home. Your wife gets an alert to confirm both children are off to school (there will be legal issues on age, liability, etc. that will need to be resolved, but security measures can be put in place) at the same daily time of 8:30am. Your wife indicates yes and the app says to have children outside at 8:16am. Wife then decides she wants to go to Costco and opens the app again and selects it as one of her preset favorite destinations and scrolls to indicates a desired time of arrival of 9am. Due to her subscription level not being higher and the high demand during that time, the app replies back and says there is a 9:15 arrival slot available and she checks okay.
A richer family down the street has bought their own drone car. It's a Porsche-made brand and has a lot of fancy interior upgrades like plush carpet, high end nappa leather and even a setting to bypass speed limits and acceleration levels in limited situations. It's called "thrill mode." The Porsche drone can do 0-60 in 2.3 seconds in the right conditions when this mode is selected. Anyway, this drone can be pre-scheduled to take Dad to work, kids to school, and then Mom to her part-time attorney job and then to the spa in the afternoon, all with the same car. No more two or 3 car families needed. In the event of an overlap, Porsche has an additional option of flex scheduling where a company-owned drone Porsche will come by and pick up someone at the family residence when the family owned drone is otherwise unavailable. This family is wealthy and really doesn't like riding in a shared drone car. Plus, their Porsche drone is red so it stands out and makes them look cool to the neighbors. haha.
So, why is all this going to happen and fast? This article I read (wish I could remember where) said profits per vehicle is going to go up dramatically for the automaker when they own their own fleet and do subscription services since one car can service a lot of subscriptions. More and more younger kids don't want to mess with owning and maintaining a car anyway, especially those that live in dense urban areas where parking is very expensive. So, to keep the profit train churning, all automakers are working very heavily towards this new model for vehicle sales. I also read that Honda and GM are working together on this initiative which I found interesting. Here is a link to that big partnership with GM Cruise LLC:
Anyway, where does that leave us driving enthusiasts? It will become a hobby of sorts where we were park our old, non-autonomous vehicles at driving tracks/parks/schools where we can swing by on the weekend or after work/school to go flog our cars with steering wheels and brake and throttle pedals around a track. It will become something akin to what horse riding is today. A very fun hobby for those that love riding horses, except we will be in control of our loud, internal combustion engine cars with manual controls. The younger generations will roll their eyes at us, but once they taste the freedom of controlling a powerful machine with our hands and feet, many of them will appreciate the art form.
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