How will driverless cars change our cities? | The Economist

One of the tensions in your company is. that you sell technology to car. manufacturers who want to and believe. they will sell personal cars to many. millions and billions of people over the. next 50 hundred years because that's how. it's worked. And you also sell your. technology to robo taxi companies who. believe that they will eventually. eliminate the need to own a private car. Everything will become lovely. centralized fleets of purpose-built robo. taxis. I'm going to make you pick a. winner, right? whose vision of a future. is right there. Are we going to be.

owning our own cars even once this. technology is fully mature and we don't. need a steering wheel or are we actually. going to be shifting to you push a. button, a car shows up, it takes you. where you need to go, you jump out and. you never worry about driving again? >> Both. So, uh the key thing is that all. of those applications require cars which. require manufacturers. So, uh, manufacturers are not going away in a. robo taxi world, um, because it's really. hard to build, uh, you know, there's. about 60 million personal cars built a. year. It's really hard to build that.

volume of vehicles, uh, around the. world. And so, manufacturers are world. class doing that. Uh, and we're going to. see both applications. I mean, today. Uber has about 10 million drivers on. their platform. Um, uh, and there are. over a billion cars in the world. So, you know, even if ride hailing grows by. one or two orders of magnitude, there's. still going to be an enormous um uh you. know, market for for consumer vehicles. Uh so, you you really are going to see. both. Um but interestingly, with with.

robo taxis, I think in the in the short. medium term, you know, we're going to. see commercially owned fleets. Um, and I. actually think hybrid networks that have. robo taxis and human-driven uh taxis are. going to be uh be more efficient because. ride hailing is very peaky. And so if. you have robo taxis that serve the peak, you're going to have very underutilized. assets. And one of the reasons why um. Uber and other networks work so well was. because uh they're um you know they. don't own the assets and people can.

bring their own cars uh and driving. services onto the platform when they. want uh to monetize and and effectively. make sure that they're more efficient. during those peak times. This feels like. a description of waves impact on society. where you slot into the existing mix and. not much changes but everything is now. level four and driverless which strikes. me as implausible because if human. drivers steadily drop off the road I.

cannot imagine that the fabric of. society will continue to look the same. How will we see the difference as this. technology matures and rolls out and. human drivers steadily drop away? What. what will be different in this you know. view of North London? Well, so I'm not. saying the distribution uh will will uh. will stay the same. I think we're going. to see we are going to see increasing. adoption of ride hailing particularly. when you get that price below a dollar a. mile in major cities like London you. know the demand I think is going to. significantly uh go up. I think we'll.

see reduced personal car ownership um. but still significant personal car. ownership. A key thing I'm saying is. that we want to unlock the innovation of. operators and manufacturers to keep. innovating and building new products. Um. and I think we're going to see many. things tried like I I raised earlier the. idea of do you sit in a robo taxi and. face each other or do you still sit in. the facing the direction of travel? you. know, when you no longer need to be. responsible for driving, how does a car. turn into a media or entertainment.

space, a meeting space, a sleeping. space? What other use cases do we see? Um, how do we see the shift in I mean, I. I can give you many examples. I'm. excited about uh speed bumps. You know, when cars all comply with uh with um the. speed limit and we remove speed bumps, how does that reduce energy usage of. deceleration and wear and tear? or. traffic lights when we can communicate. between vehicles more intelligently and. not have to wait inefficiently. Um.

London has 10 times the size of Hide. Park taken up by car parks when we can. turn those car parks to green parks. Well, there's other other examples like. real estate uh or for example roads. where there's lots of shops. When you. remove car parks on the roadside, you. actually see increased uh some studies. that have shown you see increased shop. turnover as a result because it makes. the street more um engaging and. interactive. Of course, making it um. better for vulnerable uh for for. vulnerable road users on on the roads. There's so many examples of how this is.

going to change and I think it will be. the most fundamental change to the um uh. to to transportation in the cities that. we live in. And then you can think about. the implications beyond uh you know. driving whether that's um delivery or or. public transport being able to have. smaller and more frequent and more. personalized public transport um or. autonomy in uh you can go beyond that. into manufacturing healthcare um uh. domestic applications. You know, I think. uh ultimately about 65% of the world's.

GDP is in physical industries and I. think AI is going to be able to bring. benefit to this work just as much as. we're seeing in um you know cognitive. and knowledge work. Uh when it comes to. freeing up our time for what matters. most when it comes to giving us leverage. over our time by delegating tasks um to. physical machines and to be able to. elevate what we do. I think we're going. to see this in a massive way through the. physical world.