Are we being forced to go electric?

[Alex321]

£28k is a shed load of cash . Comes back once more to used car prices. What they going to look like in future, right now EVs are unaffordable for the many .

£28K is a lot to most of us, but in terms of new car prices, it is what you would pay for many mid-range family cars.

Of course, most of us never buy a new car in our lives, the majority of them are bought initially as fleet cars. But for fleet buyers, or those who do buy (or lease) new cars, £28K is not a vastly expensive car.

 

[CXRAndy]

Never been a huge fanboy of any car but geez
you take the Tesla Flag sh…. ger medal

Better grab these

View attachment 625340

Until you've owned or had a long term usage, your not in a position to comment

 

[ClichéGuevara]

Never been a huge fanboy of any car but geez
you take the Tesla Flag sh…. ger medal

Better grab these

View attachment 625340

Having driven and been in a few different makes, I think it's fair to say Tesla are very good at marketing.

 

[All uphill]

Ul doesn't bode well. The thought of an automated car on crowded roads sounds like a utopian nightmare to me

We are all speculating, of course. None of us can be sure what will happen.

I'd rather entrust my safety to a well-programmed robot than the average uk human!

 

[Tenkaykev]

So we are going to have electric self drive vehicles which won't be employing anyone to drive them , not paying road tax , made in a factory which is mainly operated by robots and used by an online business which is hardly paying any tax !
So how is the economy going to run ?

Nobody pays road tax, at least not since its abolition in 1937. There is Vehicle Excise Duty which varies depending on vehicle emissions. Plenty of vehicles available with little or no VED.

 

[gzoom]

So we are going to have electric self drive vehicles which won't be employing anyone to drive them , not paying road tax , made in a factory which is mainly operated by robots and used by an online business which is hardly paying any tax !
So how is the economy going to run ?

Massively increased productivity, huge reductions in errors (usually human related), opens up true 24/7 logistics/usage of things like roads/trucks etc.

The potential for such technology to change the world is unimaginable, the difference between you and me versus the next Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, is they can see/realise the potential of change not just be scared by it.

It is still a BIG IF, but who ever can achieve true autonomy will literally have the world as their oyster.

 

[Electric_Andy]

You're describing taxis today. You ring up or order one online, it arrives and takes you where you want to go and you pay for the service. Except taxis have been around the entire time the car ownership has exploded.

For sure, there are arguments such as self driving can be cheaper (no driver to pay) and may become more saturated than taxis. But we shouldn't underestimate the desire to have your own self driving vehicle, parked on the drive. That desire isn't going to go away, people don't always consider personal transport in a logical, rational, cost/benefit approach

These are my thoughts as well. I'd like to think that a car sitting in my drive is not being wasted, as someone else said. I'm paying VED and Insurance yearly anyway. And if it's not in use then it's not polluting or costing me any money in fuel. As Taxis stand at the moment, I wouldn't want to rely on one for every time I wanted to use the car. And at £14 for a return trip into town, a self-drive Johnny Cab would have to be at least half that to make it attractive. Actually the bus would be £4.80 return and they are never full, so perhaps the option to go carless has been here the whole time but with few takers.

 

[Illaveago]

Massively increased productivity, huge reductions in errors (usually human related), opens up true 24/7 logistics/usage of things like roads/trucks etc.

The potential for such technology to change the world is unimaginable, the difference between you and me versus the next Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, is they can see/realise the potential of change not just be scared by it.

It is still a BIG IF, but who ever can achieve true autonomy will literally have the world as their oyster.

You have forgotten one crucial point !
For any business to survive you need customers ! If you pay workers they can spend money on things .
It was either the Greeks or the Romans that discovered that it was far better to employ people rather than keep slaves . They were more productive and lived longer , plus the money they earned helped to drive the economy .

 

[figbat]

These are my thoughts as well. I'd like to think that a car sitting in my drive is not being wasted, as someone else said. I'm paying VED and Insurance yearly anyway. And if it's not in use then it's not polluting or costing me any money in fuel. As Taxis stand at the moment, I wouldn't want to rely on one for every time I wanted to use the car. And at £14 for a return trip into town, a self-drive Johnny Cab would have to be at least half that to make it attractive. Actually the bus would be £4.80 return and they are never full, so perhaps the option to go carless has been here the whole time but with few takers.

This assumes a model of pay-per-use - it might be that a carpooling or subscription service becomes normalised so that you can hail a ride whenever you need it with no further cost.

Additionally, if you give up the need for a personal car then you don't need a house with a driveway, so may be able to live nearer to places you want to get to. You may also not need a garage. You also save yourself the cost of owning a vehicle, which funds a lot of taxi rides.

As stated above, for most domestic users a car spends most of the time being an ornament. In a commercial context you'd never have a machine with such low utilisation rates and it represents a big depreciating asset.

 

[icowden]

As Taxis stand at the moment, I wouldn't want to rely on one for every time I wanted to use the car. And at £14 for a return trip into town, a self-drive Johnny Cab would have to be at least half that to make it attractive. Actually the bus would be £4.80 return and they are never full, so perhaps the option to go carless has been here the whole time but with few takers.

And the problem with the bus is that I have to walk 15 mins to the bus stop, wait up to half an hour for the bus to complete a journey that could have taken 10 minutes in an Uber. In fact it would be quicker for me to do the 30 minute walk to town than get the bus (and better for me too!). But the way back - I now have shopping to get to the bus stop and a long walk with heavy bags...

Thus if I can call an auto-cab and get a ten minute lift to town each way for £2.50 the bus becomes redundant.

 

[gzoom]

It was either the Greeks or the Romans that discovered that it was far better to employ people rather than keep slaves . They were more productive and lived longer , plus the money they earned helped to drive the economy .

Yet both of those cultures viewed slavery as normal .

Am not sure how the link between autonomy and slavery can even exist? But time is the biggest commodity around, its actually worth far more than money. Jobs essentially swap time for money, the difference been you never get time back, ever, and money, well that is a purely human abstract.

Autonomy for personal travel has the potential to release so much time for everyone that is current trapped by essentially the logistics for getting people/things from A to B. When/if the technology arrives, who ever can work out how best to monazites that free time will become the next billionaire.

Tesla gets all the press on 'Full Self Driving' but Waymo (Google) has been at it for far longer and spent much much more $$$$$$$. One thing am sure everyone realizes with Google is they never do anything for 'free', Google already has so much personal data on everyone, imagine their 'worth' if they now controlled personal transportation!!

Am genuinely fascinated to see how all this develops.

 

[ClichéGuevara]

And the problem with the bus is that I have to walk 15 mins to the bus stop, wait up to half an hour for the bus to complete a journey that could have taken 10 minutes in an Uber. In fact it would be quicker for me to do the 30 minute walk to town than get the bus (and better for me too!). But the way back - I now have shopping to get to the bus stop and a long walk with heavy bags...

Thus if I can call an auto-cab and get a ten minute lift to town each way for £2.50 the bus becomes redundant.

Not for long, once you spend hours in traffic if everyone did the same.

 

[cougie uk]

And the problem with the bus is that I have to walk 15 mins to the bus stop, wait up to half an hour for the bus to complete a journey that could have taken 10 minutes in an Uber. In fact it would be quicker for me to do the 30 minute walk to town than get the bus (and better for me too!). But the way back - I now have shopping to get to the bus stop and a long walk with heavy bags...

Thus if I can call an auto-cab and get a ten minute lift to town each way for £2.50 the bus becomes redundant.

Unless you had a bike....

 

[ClichéGuevara]

This assumes a model of pay-per-use - it might be that a carpooling or subscription service becomes normalised so that you can hail a ride whenever you need it with no further cost.

Additionally, if you give up the need for a personal car then you don't need a house with a driveway, so may be able to live nearer to places you want to get to. You may also not need a garage. You also save yourself the cost of owning a vehicle, which funds a lot of taxi rides.

As stated above, for most domestic users a car spends most of the time being an ornament. In a commercial context you'd never have a machine with such low utilisation rates and it represents a big depreciating asset.

Will uber get my boat in and out of the lake?

 

[cougie uk]

So we are going to have electric self drive vehicles which won't be employing anyone to drive them , not paying road tax , made in a factory which is mainly operated by robots and used by an online business which is hardly paying any tax !
So how is the economy going to run ?

Quick ! Throw your clogs into the machines !