Total acknowledgment US vehicles are inferior, but no desire or drive to compete, only stifle.
It’s sad, and the outcome is entirely predictable.
It's even predictable and inevitable based on that fundamental tenet of capitalism: the market.
It's weird kinda knowing what the outcome is going to be, but not knowing exactly how we're going to get there and how long it's going to take. Feels like it's all in slow motion.
But you're right in terms of, if they don't get bailed out it could bring pain to certain demographics that any side of politics doesn't want to get blamed for. It's hard to see either side making the difficult decision to inflict mid-term pain for, maybe, very long term gain. Not a concept voters will accept.
Need a consolidation auto-makers in the US to maybe rationalise things a bit?
Okay. So... flying cars? Don't think so. Robotaxis make sense where taxis make sense and you can get by without a car already. The demographic decline is real.
Not to mention the noise. Residential neighborhoods will ban these immediately (and some won't have a choice because they have, you know, trees.
Because a single autonomous vehicle operating in a shared
fleet can replace multiple privately owned cars, the
widespread adoption of this technology can’t help but
reduce new-car sales volumes.
If we can travel and send stuff around from point A to point B cheaply and instantly by dropping ourselves or an item into an ocean of cars roaming our streets autonomously, there is a lot more demand for rides.
Also comfortably traveling longer distances might alter where we live. If we can walk out the door, sit down in a comfortable robotaxi right away and exit in the city center 10 minutes later, we might not have to live right in the city center anymore. Another driver for more demand.
Essentially everyone has a car. The car is mostly idle. If car availability starts to approach instant then people don't need personal vehicles that are idle 95% of the time. Car quantity overall goes down unless you can 20x current utilization, which is a lot of trips and fuel.
Not to mention that if anything resembling current quantity of extant cars becomes the current quantity of cars using roadways at a given moment, most cities will gridlock.
If the thesis is "cars will approach 50% or greater utilization" then car numbers must drop barring a massive increase in road capacity for which the land does not exist.
You can build stacked roads a few levels up. Capacity doubles or triples without any significant land use.
First, personal flying vehicles are definitely not going to be a common mode of transportation. If and when this happens, it will be for ultra rich, select few people, effectively replacing a private helicopter. We don't have the infrastructure, regulation or technology to have millions of people buzzing around in their astro-ford like the fifth element - this is still very much science fiction.
Second, scooters and bikes need infrastructure, which in 99.99% of the US, is not made for this. In fact, current infrastructure is very much hostile to bicycles and scooters, so in order for this to work, there's going to have to be a massive investment in new infrastructure all over the US. Is this very likely? I wouldn't say so.
The US locked itself into using cars through massive, expensive infrastructure and culture and I don't see this changing easily.
The population growth slowing might be true, but it's still growing, and there's still a profit to be made there.
The new factories are going to replace manufacturing in foreign countries. I'm not sure the effects on supply will be drastic. It's just a matter of building cars domestically, avoiding tariffs and securing domestic pipelines.
Finally, asking these corporations to "look 20 years ahead" instead of maximizing short term profits, is a common tradeoff that they are all aware of. Currently, short term gains is what's being preferred in almost every industry. I doubt any board members will vote to leave money on the table for long term benefits. More money now always wins.
If by flying cars you mean flying robotaxies, then all you need are landing pads. They can be easily accomodated on top of buildings. And regulation for what? We already know how to fky helicopters by autopilot, no need for innovation stiffling with more regulation.
In proper downtown areas I suspect even if you'd cover every rooftop in these it wouldn't be enough capacity
The car manufacturers could have staved this off - they keep developing new models with little to no marginal improvement. Once we got seatbelts, airbags and similar in cars, there's literally no reason for a new model to drop, but here we are with new models dropping every 5 years, using parts that don't fit the old model!
Maybe if they were dropping only new types of cars (say, EVs), I could see a need, but there's no reason a 2010 Toyota has to be replaced by a 2024 - you have the jigs, the factory, the supply chain for parts already. Just keep making it and charge less.
You keep selling to people living in countryside, where you don't go anywhere without a car and where fleets of cars would have to be very large to be able to cover the territory in a meaningful way. There will be less and less people living there but it could affect the kind of cars that are manufactured. By the way, a self driving car would be very useful to elderly people living in their house far away from the nearest town.
In any case, less cars.
People in cities demanded EVs, yet didn't show up to keep buying them.
People in cities apparently know best what car companies should build, yet they don't buy the cars.
Car companies build for suburbanites.
Suburbanites buy cars.
Transportation is going through many massive changes right now. I haven't driven to the office in a decade. Huge segments of the workforce are migrating to exoburbs because they don't need to drive to work anymore. My son hasn't mentioned wanting to drive. My neighbor's kid flat out says she doesn't want to learn (both will be able to soon) and many of their friends don't want to learn either. There is a generation growing up far less invested in the car than the generation before them. Some of the points in this article may not be perfect, predicting the future is a fools bet, but it sure feels like the trend they are bringing up is real.
Visit Amsterdam, then visit LA. Tell me which place is more pleasant to be in.
Cabs are replaced something like 3x more often than privately owned cars. And when they run 24/7 because of self-driving, that factor will even increase.
We don't need fleets of autonomous vehicles, each carrying two tons of metal for transporting a person or two and clogging up cities. We just need a train network that doesn't suck.
I wonder what it would be like for most cars to be replaced with flying cars (i.e. helicopters). I think the noise alone would be a huge issue. Helicopters can be heard from extremely far away and are quite noisy. If you multiply that by like 1 million in a metropolis, I think that would approach unbearable, specially at nighttime, etc.. Also I don't think noise can be reduced too much, including electric propulsion. Propeller engineering would give you some reduction but still I think too much for near universal usage.
But I think the main thing is just cost. Electric aircraft like that would really be just too expensive for everyone to have em. Not everyone can afford a good old (electric) automobile today.
There's also battery technology needing a significant improvement.
Regulation and infrastructure is comparatively solvable I think.
BLKNSLVR•52m ago
The very first line begins: Take a look around the American automotive landscape
Which seems is a prevailing mindset of the US administration (which infects those at lower, but still leadership, levels due to the short term legal and financial 'influence' of the administration): Denial of the changing world. Classic uber-conservatism, which works until it, explosively or revolutionarily, breaks. The ripples of which affect the innocent most of all.
(I'm more progressive than conservative, for roughly my own definition of what those loaded terms mean, but I'm also aware of the social problems caused by uber-progressiveness, which bumps up against humanity's basic resistance to change, or too much change too quickly).
The world kinda feels stuck between the 'uber' of both sides, with very little conversation covering the majority middle.