It’s not the first time, but maybe the most dramatic telling Bob Lutz has undertaken to dish out the future he believes in—one where the car as we know it is dead and gone.
Lutz penned the piece with Automotive News where he describes the budding self-driving car industry as the beginning of the end. Bluntly, he believes in 20 years cars will be banned from public roads and self-driving modules will pick up riders, merge onto freeways and drop riders off at their desired location. The ride is billed to a credit card, and the personal vehicle model is forgotten.
The former auto executive of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors goes on to say the dealership model will die, performance won’t be a marketable facet and private race tracks will become a destination for “elites” who want to drive their cars still. His vision effectively flips the industry upside down and pegs automakers as “handset” makers—building the core of the module for transportation companies. The transportation company, like Uber or Lyft, will describe the module it needs and automakers will bid for the contract to build it.
It’s a bold prediction, and we’re not naive enough to say things are changing rapidly, but it seems highly unlikely small town, USA, will follow directly in urban America’s footsteps.
Comments
I see a mix of everything in the future.
I can see urban areas with self driving pods but the fly over states just will keep with what we have.
First there is no money to fix the bridges so how will you redo all the roads to accommodate this in 20 years.
Hell most places do not even have sewer lines let alone roads ready for self driving.
Then the factor to eliminate all cars? imagine the rebellion on that from people that can’t afford or are able to give them up. Cars to many are the one thing they will not give up. It is still a great part of many peoples life styles and while it will continue to decrease the car will not be gone in 20 years. Changes yes but not gone.
I do agree there is a great decline in performance. Kids today just don’t care and none of it is cheap anymore. New is priced high and used is not much better as even a rusted out old Nova can bring $10K and kids just don’t have that kind of money. I used to buy old clean Big Block Chevy SS models and GTO models all day for $2K-3K.
FYI bob lutz, cars are a personal matter. For many of us they are an expression for who we are (for many others they could care less of course as well) For some people they keep certain necessities that remain in their cars so that their cars are mobile closets, tool boxes, party machines, etc. there will be hoards of people buying personal cars even if they use the public ones just because the luxury and cleanliness! would you get into a public car that a teenager just stuck their used gum on the dash? Heck No! I’m buying personal autos for the rest of my life and 90% of the world will to
THEY will have to pry my ICE vehicle from my cold dead hands.
I like to ride in ICE – wonderful fast trains running up to 320 km/h.
At the time table change this December, the new tracks from Ebensfeld in the North of Bavaria to Erfurt in Thuringia will be opned for business, the missing link for the fast north-southe ICE line which offers trains to carry people in less tha 4 hours from Munich to Berlin, and this in the comfortable ICE trains.
TGV’s are way faster and got more lux. They also aren’t purely electric. When they go into overdrive the diesel kicks in to bridge the needed power gap
No diesel in TGVs.
There are hybrid trains or locomotives, but with diesel to cover the “last mile” or gaps in the electrified network, but certainly not for a power boost. Real high speed trains need electrical power from overhead lines or so.
The British Department of transportation demanded a design hybrid of long distance train sets, and got it. But I believe that those train sets are actually not being built, but that the Great Western Line is being electrified.
they run both. the run off the electric lines on normal tracks, but on the high speed ones they kick in the diesel boost. Ever ridden in one?
No, Jake, you got something wrong.
Diesel and high speed dont go together.
Where and how did you get this idea of a “diesel boost” for high speed trains?
While taking the TGV from Paris Est to Mulhouse via Strasbourg, if you get a seat right at the front or back in the car with the engine room. On the normal tracks rated to 200km/hr you run on electricity. once you get on the bullet train lines you hear just behind you in the engine compartment a large, yet well muffled growl as the turbo diesel picks up to ad extra voltage to that coming off the power lines. Mind you that these engines are only connected to a generator. no trains today use a transmission and power tube. It adds enough voltage to run up to 530Km/hr. The only have reached that in testing though. The fastest lines go to Marseille where they almost reach 400km/hr
This is a misinterpretation of the noise you have heard. Mind you, also electric motors make noise and the transformators and inverters and the cooling fans for all the electronic and mechanical generators of heat. And the noise increases with the load (the cooling of the transformers in the power car of a German ICE-1 become noisier on arrival in a station because there is no headwind).
Also, the TGV (as well as the German ICE-1) don’t have cars with an engine room, but completely separate power cars on both ends, both pulling and pushing. The Alstom AGV (which runs only in Italy) and the German ICE-3 and ICE-4 have distributed power with powered bogies (called truck in USA) underneath passenger cars.
No diesel powered train runs faster than 200 km/h (125 miles/hr). The fastest are the Intercity 125 by British Rail and the German ICE-TD (T for tilt, and D for diesel) which is decommissioned for being uneconomical. It also is a waste of space and weight to carry all the energy for a long distance in the vehicle itself. Better to supply the power momentarily needed from the outside, i.e. from the overhead wire in the case of railways.
In France this comes in 25 kV ~50Hz, in Germany, Swtzerland, Austria 15 kV ~16.7 Hz.
k smarty pants, tell me the last time you took a tgv. I know they got two separate engine cars, on eat the front and at the back. There is no mistaking the noise of the motor. The electric whirl is pretty distinct in the chassis from the undercarriage and it is entirely different from the engine noise. theory is nice, but past 200km/hr those engines kick in.
Dear Jake, I’m not saying you’re wrong but I researched this and there are TGV trains that are Dual engine electro/diesel that operate similar but not exactly the way you described (A-Train Class 800 by Hitachi with a designed top speed 139mph (225kmh) but actual operating speed of 125mph (200kmh), but they are not operated on the Paris Est to Mulhouse via Strasbourg line. They seem to only operate in Great Britain. So I think Observer7 maybe right. Or for some reason they temporally were using the A-Train Class 800 by Hitachi train when you rode on it. Source: “List of high-speed trains” on Wikipedia.
I suggest that the next time you are on a TGV station in France (or one of the neighboring countries) you go up and ask the conductor about the capacity of the Diesel tank, and how much liter of Diesel they need for the 3 hours from Paris Gare de Lyon to Marseille.
I see that you are not shy of being laughed at. So be courageous and ask!
And then tell me what you got.
But it might be better to read somthing about TGV, e.g on the en.wikipedia.org, and avoid being ashamed for dumb questions.
@jeff3948: TGV is a registered trade mark of SNCF, no other railway operator can call their trains a TGV.
I mentioned the Hitachi Class 800 in my November 6 12:29 PM message, without mentioning the designation of it. These are not high speed trains; those should be in the max speed range of at least 250 km/h.
” Units built for the East Coast Main Line will be primarily electric, while all units built for the Great Western Main Line will be electro-diesel, with the possibility to be converted to electric-only operation by removal of the diesel engines.” — en.Wikipedia.org on British Rail Class 800
“As part of Crossrail the Great Western was already planned to be electrified from Airport Junction to Maidenhead but, following a number of announcements and delays, the government announced in March 2011 that the line would be electrified between London and Cardiff together with the section linking Bristol Parkway and Bristol Temple Meads. In July 2012, the government announced that the final portion of the Great Western, from Cardiff to Swansea, would be electrified.” — en.Wikipedia on “Great Western main line”
Then the “Hitachi Super Train” will get rid of their diesel engines. Free at last…
Dear Observer7, At first I didn’t understand your comment about ICE trains, because I thought you were talking about Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Trains which I didn’t think could go that fast. Then I looked it up in Wikipedia and discovered that ICE trains are mostly electric and ICE means (InterCity Express). Now I finally realize you were being sarcastic because you must have known that Tom was talking about gasoline cars when he said “ICE vehicle”. But why you jumped from ICE cars to ICE trains I do not understand, unless it was just to be sarcastic. Oh and one more thing, you could be a little bit nicer in your responses to Jake and Jake could be nicer to you too. Courtesy always helps people learn more efficiently and does not turn them off, and helps them feel better about learning new things. Patience also helps with teaching people that have learned or surmised incorrectly about something. And it sometimes helps to present sources as evidence to prove your points. As you probably know good patient education is the key to a better world. And if they do not want to learn or get angry then don’t let them upset you, just respond with facts and source links as a last effort to educate. If that still doesn’t work then just leave it alone and don’t let it upset you. Just some advice.
Rather than being sarcastic I wanted to be playful, playing with ICE as a MUM (see below).
As to Jake, I was very patient, but at some point patience runs out and so I sent this person away, recommending to find out reality the hard way.
Insisting on the nonsense that high speed rail needs diesel engines because supposedly the overhead line does not provide enough energy, when the history of railway shows just the opposite, is really unique. I wonder if that was not a deliberate provocation, a troll move.
Maybe he’s right – but, at that rate,
20 years would really mess with Cadillac’s reinvigoration timeline.
Seems to fit perfectly into the elitest puffery that comes out of Sacremento.
I think Bob is right. I don’t know any 20 year old who gives a crap about cars, And couldn’t change a tire to save their life. In 10 years self driving cars Will be normal like it or not, And anybody under 40 then will love them. I am 56 years old and have owned 20 cars in my life and have loved them all, but everything changes.
In twenty years I say no.
His vision is possible, the timeline is not. We still have a few years before we see a truly 100% self-driving vehicle operating perfectly on public roads. From there, it will be another few years before is enters mass market application and is not exclusive to the S-Classes and Range Rovers of the industry. Legislature will be slow to catch up. Consumers in lower socio-economic levels will be difficult or rural areas will be slow to adjust. It will be at least 30 years.
Sure the automotive industry is changing , but I do disagree with some of Bob’s vision .
Even ICE’s are not going to completely disappear from our lives in 20 years . In the urban enviroment , buses would disappear and lots of them are now running on natural gas , taxi cabs or limo’s would be gone which is highly unlikely. And for people living in the suburbs that drive long distances to get to work not all are going to want to be driven by a carbot , some may but those that actually like to drive a vehicle and see it as a reflection of themselves will never want to give that up .
Future generations may actually like the idea of not having to be bothered by owning a car , but there is still going to be a market for those of us that actually enjoy driving . It’s a huge culture that I don’t see dieing so soon . I just recently watched a You Tube video of a car nut that drives new cars and gives the viewer his views on his experience driving the car for a week . A Mercedes 2-door coupe he evaluated actually had speakers inside that piped in the fake sound of a big block V-8 for the drivers enjoyment . I think these guys are called ” gear heads ” .
And also there are guys / gals like myself that love to drive and on a Saturday afternoon enjoy getting away from the family for a couple of hours in the garage and detail my ” baby ” . For me it’s a form of relaxation and kind of a hobby, ( an expensive one ) .
And we would need a massive government project to rebuild our infrastructure for his vision and that is going to take alot of money and more than 20 years to accomplish . Like David said it’s possible but not the timeline .
Bob could be right but I think he is off by a couple of hundred years. I see the ICE being around for quiete a long time. Sure ther will be changes but not as drastis as Bob predicts
Thsi is how Bob Lutz look in the future might work:
1st: having full automatic self-steering cars, there is no need to search for a parking spot near your home, which in densely populated city areas can take quite some time. Instead, you let the car stop at the entrance to your house, and then send the car to search for a parking spot in some parking lot not too far away from where you happen to live. Just like a taxi, with the difference that you own the taxi, and have or still are paying for it.
The next morning or whenever you want to drive away (or being driven) again to other places, you call your car by pushing a button or making a whoosh on your “smart” phone, and the car comes from its parking lot to your house to pick you up.
2nd: When this works so fine, why should you buy such a pod in the first place? Paying for it a whole lot of money. Why not using one pad/car available from some public pool of such vehicles, which you can simply command to pick you up or set you down wherever you please, without having to worry about parking maintenence fueling or rather loading etc? Just paying what you actually used by the minute and the mile instead a full vehicle which is not rolling most of the time.
Now, there is an advantage of owning such a vehicle personally. you can leave stuff in the car. You can personalise it with decorations and other stuff. Leave some clothing in there.
Finally, for the spread out suburbia or lonely farms, such a model is not the best suited. But for cities at any rate.
Before this all happens we better figure what will happen if you dissolve the automobile industry. What will happen to the people and the financial impact to the country. The automotive industry affects everyone and every business. It will eventually happen but after a transitional system is developed to create industries or services where new technology will create jobs for people to transition from automotive orientated jobs to new career jobs. If not Blue Max????
While there will be autonomous vehicles.. they will be like a semi-automatic transmission as a driver will be able to go through the gears or have it in automatic with the computer doing the work meaning cars in the future will have full autonomous mode or driver mode; in full autonomous mode, the car will drive itself taking everyone in the car to a specific location whereas in driver mode.. the car will work like cars do now (a third mode.. may be introduced as it is for children where the computer watches in the background except it is programmed to not allow the driver to drive wreckless or exceed speed limits as too many mistakes and the computer will go into autonomous mode).
We just need to look at past predictions.
Flying cars? How many times have they said we all would be flying to work by now?
While a flying car is possible it just has never fit into society.
Like turbine cars. They were predicted to be everywhere but today they can build one but they are not practical.
I could go on with more examples of the future that never was or will be.
I do see more integration in some autonomous things on a car but I do not see us in pods.
The big factor is left out often is the human factor. First most drivers are not all that trusting. Second they are going to have to confront the reality that others will be able to control how the go, where they go, how fast they go and when they go. For all this to work someone will have to oversee this and you will have to give them control over you.
The youth may hate cars but they love to go as they please. It is an appliance that they love at their discretion.
The infrastructure can not deal with it now and it is not going to be fixed nation wide in 29 years.
The legal factors still need sorted
The free time? Most of us drive 30 min or less and you will get little done in that time.
People now do not keep up vehicles. They trash interiors. They stash drugs, they piss themselves. How would you like to travel daily in a human Petrie dish.
The Chang of the life style also is a big factor.
I do agree buying a car is going to get worse but look for deals like the Apple phone plan that are more inclusive than the present leases.
Then factor in economic collapse, global conflict and ever present terror or crime that could effect any future plans and change all this.
Have you watched the videos for drone cars? If someone had asked me six months ago if anything like them would even be possible I would probably have guessed in five or ten years, at the earliest. But there’s apparently a few companies trying to produce them (with manned prototypes testing now). I wouldn’t be surprised to see them buzzing about in twenty years, maybe fifteen. Not mainstream anywhere around us, mind you, but probably entertaining and shuttling people at theme parks and maybe in places like Dubai or Beijing.
I agree the future will first be in plants with trucks delivering parts, airports running parking lot loops. It will be limited controls environments.
Let’s put it this way Cadillac is not working on facial recognition for their autonomous vehicles to let them be driverless very soon.
I don’t think performance cars will ever go away, I think people will always pay a premium to have a fast car. Now how that car is powered is a mystery.
It will be a cold day in Hell before this comes along I believe.
I see a slightly different future. You will still own the passenger cube of you car but a separate engine will provide all the motive power and autonomous smarts to get you where you are going. This “engine” will be provided as a competitive service-you will be able to take bids on the service-similar to what Uber and Lyft provide today (although much less expensive). During parts of your trip, a single cube can be attached to an engine while during other parts, 2 or more cubes can be attached to a larger engine. The algorithms are similar to luggage handling systems at airports. The engine will almost certainly electric.
Seems like some people got on the wrong track. I am referring to Internal Combustion Engine as in automobiles and trucks.
… and I played with ICE which is a MUM.
What is a MUM, you might ask. Multi Use Mnemonic.