Bob Lutz has been around the block and seen a lot of things at many different automakers. That gives his recent article on the end of the automobile era as we know it great weight. To dive into it further, Automotive News shared its thoughts on camera with a small panel to discuss the changes and what Lutz envisions.
The moral of the story is this: something similar will likely happen in the future, where self-driving cars become the norm and traditional car buying and ownership changes. To what degree and when it occurs is still up for debate, though. Lutz penned a 20-year mark in his article, though some think it’s further out than that.
Legislating human-driven cars off the road is one major piece to Lutz’s vision—a world where governments ban cars as we know it and they’re left to private tracks. The panel goes into great detail about this and whether design, performance and other traditional attributes play a part in next great automotive era. Jump into the video below.
Comments
Mr. Lutz is showing an arrogance of vision. The future he paints has validity, but only encapsulates a chunk of the population. I see a future where freeways and certain areas/regions will be dedicated to autonomous traffic. Outside of that, human handlers will still be prevalent and preferred. His statements show that even after all these years, he still doesn’t really understand the consumer.
Reg: “he still doesn’t really understand the consumer.” _ Maybe he just better understands the environmental peril we are facing then many do and the urban transport trends.
Bob is obviously talking about the preponderance of human transport situations, urban and suburban areas. But even in rural areas, we will have a need in the future for transporting humans and that will include a stratified means of transport from transport services to personal vehicles/cars & pick-ups.
In the area I live in, a confluence of several sparsely populated rural valleys with very small communities, we already have small buses/vans serving the transport needs of those extended rural populations. It serves those who can no longer afford a personal vehicle and those who don’t drive, seniors, etc.
The city populations have for many years now, been moving away from personal vehicle ownership. Cost and parking being the driving motivators for the decision to embrace a car-less life.
None of this will happen overnight as human developments move at a glacial pace, probably to slow to save us from our own behavior.
Dear Tre Deuce, I think you are right except for one thing. When you say, “The city populations have for many years now, been moving away from personal vehicle ownership. Cost and parking being the driving motivators for the decision to embrace a car-less life.” Cars have never really been popular or needed in big cities. Chicago had the “L” train starting in 1892 and electric street railway system from 1913 to 1947 and then Bus lines. All of these started operating long before the personal car was popular and 2 continue to operate today the “L” and Bus line (CTA). Also, when I lived in Chicago and then in a nearby suburb of Chicago, Forest Park, that had easy access to the “L” train, within walking distance, I never needed or owned a car for 23 years from 1983-2006 until I moved to a small rural town in Nevada. But you are right about why people don’t want to own a car in the city, lack of available parking and the cost of owning.
Hi! Jeff
Reg; “Cars have never really been popular or needed in big cities.” – Quite true for the high density core of cities.
In the early days of the car and the core of big cities, few people owned cars, the density and build-out didn’t include or encourage ‘on or off’ street vehicle storage. Horse drawn carriages and then later Rail Trolleys, taxis, and later buses, as you aptly noted, were the means of transport. That changed with Ford’s Model ‘T’ which allowed the movement to the suburbs.
Developed and Undeveloped city areas ringing the core of cities, started to include small garages satellite to the house or placed under the house. GM ended the use and further development of light rail trolley cars, with their promotion of buses to move the building, extended population outside the city core and the suburbs. The bus systems saved infrastructure build-out and offered more flexibility while adding more noise and pollution.
I am just old enough to remember riding the trolley into town with my mother and aunts to go shopping downtown before they were pulled from service and replaced by buses. While in most cases the trolleys are gone, remnants of the old trolley tracks are still evident in city streets in many cities, and cities like Portland(Or.) are once again building inner city trolley lines in core areas.
Thanks for the input, Jeff
Wow, that futuristic picture of the Chevrolet FNR autonomous electric concept car from 2015 is really neat. Too bad those concept cars always look much better than the eventual production cars. By-the-way, what ever happened to that Chevrolet FNR autonomous electric concept car? There are still several videos on YouTube about it like this one: search for this code on YouTube “CLwnCCY1rQ4”. Happy dreaming.
To save the automobile as a personally owned transport, the manufacturers have to rapidly change their current business model of building and promoting ICE powered vehicles and structure their business model and efforts, to promote EV’s. The State and federal government(s) should also promote the acquisition of EV’s through tax credits, carbon taxes, and, like London, laws discouraging the use of personal vehicles in the cores of cities unless they are EV’s.
By doing so, the personal ownership of cars will be extended well into the future as long as environmental issues are resolved quickly. The potential of, and consequences of 3-degree global temperature rise is the vehicle driving the end car ownership as we know it. Managing that(temp rise) successfully, will keep us from driving over the edge into the abyss of a global environmental crisis and save personal transportation vehicles/cars and lives.
Bob Lutz sounds like someone who is afraid of technology.. there were probably people like Lutz when the automatic transmission was first widely introduced as people were told that driving as they knew it would come to an end; but just as people enjoy the efficiency of automatic transmission, autonomous driving or semi-autonomous driving will be something people will learn to enjoy.
Imagine having a car had a semi-autonomous mode that would make corrections and never allow a driver to make a critical mistake and can kick into full autonomous mode if the computer determines that the driver isn’t in condition to drive.
Dear omegatalon, What do you mean when you say, “Bob Lutz sounds like someone who is afraid of technology”? It seems like just the opposite, that he is embracing it.