At a recent automotive dinner, experts emphasized that the transition to autonomous vehicles will be more transformative than the current evolution toward electric vehicles. John McLaren, a keynote speaker, discussed the potential decline in individual car ownership in urban environments, as future generations may prefer to summon autonomous taxis instead of owning and maintaining personal vehicles. While rural and less developed areas may see different trends, he predicts that most cars will become low-margin commodities. However, luxury markets and motorsports will potentially thrive in this new landscape.
As you know, they are now being used as taxis in some US cities. Once the tech is fully developed, and the cars widely available, why would most members of the future generations living in urban areas put themselves through the rather painful and expensive process of passing a test, and buying, insuring, taxing and maintaining a car if with a swipe they could summon a vehicle to take them locally or long range, with no driver taking up a seat?
Things will be different in rural areas and less developed markets, but my hunch is the demand for individual car ownership in cities will fall dramatically and most cars will become a low margin commodity product.
Motorsport will continue to grow, as will an interest in classic cars - and both of these are fields where the UK dominates globally and which between them generate well over 100,000 highly skilled jobs here.
Maybe, after all, it's not such a tragedy that we failed to keep the faith with the likes of Rover, Triumph, and Austin, because if we had they would soon get sucked into that commodity vortex.
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