Why you have (probably) already bought your last car

Driverless taxis - the transport of the future?

By Justin Rowlatt - BBC News

I'm guessing you are scoffing in disbelief at the very suggestion of this article, but bear with me.

A growing number of tech analysts are predicting that in less than 20 years we'll all have stopped owning cars, and, what's more, the internal combustion engine will have been consigned to the dustbin of history.

Yes, it's a big claim and you are right to be sceptical, but the argument that a unique convergence of new technology is poised to revolutionise personal transportation is more persuasive than you might think.

The central idea is pretty simple: Self-driving electric vehicles organised into an Uber-style network will be able to offer such cheap transport that you'll very quickly - we're talking perhaps a decade - decide you don't need a car any more.

And if you're thinking this timescale is wildly optimistic, just recall how rapidly cars replaced horses.

Take a look at this picture of 5th Avenue in New York in 1900. Can you spot the car?

Now look at this picture from 1913. Yes, this time where's the horse?

In 1908 the first Model T Ford rolled off the production line; by 1930 the equestrian age was, to all intents and purposes, over - and all thanks to the disruptive power of an earlier tech innovation - the internal combustion engine.

So how will this latest transportation revolution unfold?

The driverless Uber model

First off, consider how Uber and other networked taxi companies have already changed the way we move around. In most major cities an Uber driver - or one of its rivals - is usually just a couple of minutes away, and charges less than established taxis, let's say £10.

The company's exponential growth is evidence of how powerful the Uber business model is.

Now take out the driver. You've probably cut costs by at least 50%.

Uber has been experimenting with driverless cars

So if we're trying to work out when this revolution will begin in earnest the key date will be when self-driving vehicle technology is available and - crucially - has regulatory backing.

That could well be sooner than you think. The UK has said it hopes to authorise the first fully autonomous cars as early as 2021.

And, say enthusiasts for autonomy, it will only take one city to prove the technology is safe and useful and the rest of the world will very quickly rush to catch up.

So self-driving cars have cut our £10 journey to £5.

The switch to electric

Now imagine the current mostly fossil fuel-powered taxi fleet is replaced with electric cars.

At the moment electric vehicles are more expensive than similar models with internal combustion engines, but offer significantly lower lifetime costs.

• Electric vehicle sales surge in UK
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They are more reliable, for a start. The typical electric car has around 20 moving parts compared to the 2,000 or so in an internal combustion engine.

As a result electric vehicles also tend to last much longer. Most electric car manufacturers expect their vehicles to keep on going for at least 500,000 miles.

These factors aren't that important for most consumers - after all, the average driver in England does less than 10,000 miles a year and our cars are parked 95% of the time. However, they are huge issues if you're using a vehicle pretty much continuously, as would be the case with a self-driving taxi.

The end of the road for the internal combustion engine?

Add in the low cost of recharging batteries compared to refuelling and you've got another dramatic reduction in costs.

And it's worth noting that the cost of electric vehicles is likely to continue to fall, and rapidly. As they become mainstream, returns to scale will drive down costs. That's the logic behind Tesla's $5bn (£3.8bn) battery plant, the so-called "Gigafactory".

How does this affect our £10 journey?

It brings another dramatic reduction. Fully autonomous electric taxi networks could offer rides at as little as 10% of current rates.

At least that's what tech prophet Tony Seba reckons. He and his team at the think-tank RethinkX have done more than anyone else to think through how this revolution might rip through the personal transportation market.

'Transport as a service'

We've now cut our £10 fare to just £1.

Mr Seba calls the idea of a robo-taxi network "transport as a service", and estimates it could save the average American as much as $6,000 (£4,560) a year. That's the equivalent of a 10% pay rise.

And don't forget, when the revolution comes you won't be behind the wheel so now you'll be working or relaxing as you travel - another big benefit.

You still think that car parked outside your flat is worth having?

What's more, once this new model of getting around takes hold the benefits are likely to be reinforcing. The more vehicles in the network, the better the service offered to consumers; the more miles self-driving cars do, the more efficient and safer they'll get; the more electric vehicles manufactured, the cheaper each one will be.

Don't worry about running out of charge

Don't worry that rural areas will be left out. A vehicle could be parked in every village waiting for your order to come.

And range anxiety - the fear that you might run out of electricity - won't be a problem either. Should the battery run low the network will send a fully charged car to meet you so you can continue your journey.

You've probably seen headlines about accidents involving self-driving cars but the truth is they will be far safer than ones driven by you and me - they won't get regulatory approval if they are not. That means tens of thousands of lives - perhaps hundreds of thousands - will be saved as accident rates plummet.

That will generate yet another cost saving for our fleets of robo-taxis. The price of insurance will tumble, while at the same time those of us who insist on continuing to drive our own vehicles will face higher charges.

Human drivers banned

According to the tech visionaries it won't be long before the whole market tilts irreversibly away from car ownership and the trusty old internal combustion engine.

RethinkX, for example, reckons that within 10 years of self-driving cars getting regulatory approval 95% of passenger miles will be in these electric robo-taxis.

Will cars parked outside houses soon be a thing of the past?

The logical next step will be for human beings to be banned from driving cars at all because they pose such a risk to other road users.

Take a moment to think about the wide-reaching effects this revolution will have, aside from just changing how we get around. There will be downsides: millions of car industry workers and taxi drivers will be looking for new jobs, for a start.

But think of the hundreds of billions of dollars consumers will save, and which can now be spent elsewhere in the economy.

Meanwhile, the numbers of cars will plummet. RethinkX estimates that the number of vehicles on US roads will fall from nearly 250 million to just 45 million over a 10-year period. That will free up huge amounts of space in our towns and cities.

And, please take note: I haven't mentioned the enormous environmental benefits of converting the world's cars to electricity.

That's because the logic of this upheaval isn't driven by new rules on pollution or worries about global warming but by the most powerful incentive in any economy - cold hard cash.

That said, there's no question that a wholesale switch away from fossil fuels will slow climate change and massively reduce air pollution.

In short, let the revolution begin!

But seriously, I've deliberately put these arguments forcefully to prompt debate and we want to hear what you think.

The Most Important Skills for the 4th Industrial Revolution? Try Ethics and Philosophy.

By Tony Wan - Oct 6, 2018

For those keeping count, the world is now entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution. That’s the term coined by Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, to describe a time when new technologies blur the physical, digital and biological boundaries of our lives.

Every generation confronts the challenges of preparing its kids for an uncertain future. Now, for a world that will be shaped by technologies like artificial intelligence, 3D printing and bioengineering, how should society prepare its current students (and tomorrow’s workforce)?

The popular response, among some education pundits, policymakers and professionals, has been to increase access to STEM and computer science skills. (Just consider, for example, the push to teach kids to code.) But at last month’s WISE@NY Learning Revolutions conference, supported by the Qatar Foundation, panelists offered a surprising alternative for the skills that will be in most demand: philosophy, ethics and morality education.

“Moral judgment and ethics could be as revolutionary as artificial intelligence in this next revolution, just as the internet was in the last revolution,” said Allan Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education. His reasoning: those building technologies that can potentially transform societies at scale may be the ones who most need a strong moral grounding.

Take the example of self-driving cars, said Keren Wong, director of development of RoboTerra, a robotics education company. She called attention to the “Moral Machine,” an ethical quandary posed by MIT professor Iyad Rahwan. The dilemma goes as follows: an autonomous vehicle is in a situation where it must make one of two choices: kill its two passengers, or five pedestrians.

Both options are tragic, but speak to a reality where technologists must program machines that make decisions with serious implications. “If we are leaving these choices in the hands of machine intelligence, then who are the people who will be programming these decisions? Who are the ones that are going to be setting up the frameworks for these machines?” asked Wong.

From left: Tony Wan, Keren Wong, Allan Goodman, Patrick Awuah, Anthony Jackson.

The push to develop and apply artificial intelligence technologies has also naturally raised concerns over automation, and the impact on jobs and employment. (See driverless trucks, for example.) But should tasks that can be automated, be automated simply for the sake of business efficiency?

That’s a question that Patrick Awuah, founder and president of Ashesi University College in Ghana, has wrestled with. “Humanity has always worked, and employment is not only about earning a living. It is also a sort of social enterprise where we engage with other people,” he said. “When we educate people in AI and the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, should those engineers and scientists be designing machines specifically to replace human work?”

Awuah, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient, continued: “If humans are designing machines to replace humans, versus helping them get work done, then that will change the structure of humanity to something that we have never seen. I’ve not read any history books where whole societies were not working. This is why it’s so important to have history and philosophy as part of the curriculum for somebody who's being educated as an engineer.”

In the United States, increased interest in technology and computer-science related career has correlated with a precipitous drop in the proportion of humanities majors at colleges. For Goodman, that’s one of his biggest worries for the future. “We’re entering a time when schools are eliminating programs in humanities, and philosophy departments are becoming an endangered species.”

“We need to be educating people so they are productive and employable,” Awuah later added. “But we also need to be educating people so that they’re creating a society that is livable and social, where human interaction is important.”

Still, he recognized that local technical expertise must be nurtured so that people can tackle challenges specific to their community. He noted that the combination of climate change and population boom will raise a host of agricultural problems across Africa. “We need local people addressing problems that are relevant to Africa, problems that will not be solved by scientists in other parts of the world.”

Panelists also emphasized the need for children to be equipped with the mindset and confidence to pursue learning throughout their lives. Only then, they concurred, can future generations stay ahead of the curve of whatever changes are wrought by technological advancements.

Students “need to be able to understand and deal with the fact that change is constant. That’s the nature of the world, and that’s the nature of what technology brings,” said Goodman.

Anthony Jackson, vice president of education at Asia Society, underscored the importance of “adaptability.” For him, “there is no doubt that the ‘new’ things that we teach today will be obsolete 20 years from now, and then our students will need to be learning yet another set of new skills. If we teach people in such a way that they are able to learn throughout their lives, they will be retooling and re-learning as things are changing in the world.”

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EdSurge is a media partner of the WISE@NY – Learning Revolutions conference, which covered travel and accommodation (but no other compensation) for participating in the event.

Tony Wan (@tonywan) is Managing Editor at EdSurge, where he covers business and financing trends in the edtech industry. Reach him at tony [at] edsurge [dot] com.