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Are ICE's doomed by EV's and Autonomous Vehicles?
Elon Musk is forecasting fully autonomous vehicles by the end of this year. As we all know, EV's are beginning their geometric growth curve that will continue for many years. It's fun to speculate about a future that I probably won't be around to see so let's have at it. Random thoughts in no particular logical sequence. Putting emotions aside and looking at things from a purely logical point of view...
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It won't be necessary to own a car. Uber and I'm sure others will have driverless cars and you just summon one when you need it. Matter of minutes. Why mess with owning a car yourself unless it's for some special purpose?
The ICE is doomed. It's loud, noisy, messy, inefficient, requires a lot of maintenance and, worse of all, very slow. A fast Porsche goes to 0-60 in what, 4-5 seconds? A common Tesla can do it in less than 2 seconds. There's no spooling up with an electric motor, 100% of torque is available immediately. And electric motors need very little maintenance and they last a long time.
New generations will probably just shake their heads at how primitive ICE's were, kind of akin to Stanley Steamers. Will our beloved Porsches retain value as curiosity collectibles, or will they just kind of fade away?
The fossil fuel based economy that we have had for hundreds of years is gone. Lots of uses as petro-chemicals but no where near the demand that drives things now.
Elon Musk, with his company X, will become the world's first trillionaire. [Digression] I'm fascinated with our Mr. Musk. He appears to be one of the all time geniuses that the world has ever produced. His prodigious mind and his prodigious activities are positioned exactly at the nexus of some of our most important technology developments: the end of the fossil fuel era and solar energy development, autonomous vehicles, colonization of outer space and Artificial Intelligence. It's all real, it's all here and progress is accelerating exponentially. And Musk has the ability to fully understand these and other complex issues, and their implications, and a preternatural ability to synthesize a number of them into a cohesive and working whole. [/Digression]
A lot of lost jobs with truck drivers becoming obsolete (notice how human beings are steadily becoming obsolete as tools of production?).
That's just a small taste, be fun to talk about.
Cheers,
John
