
Bob Lutz: Kiss the good times goodbye - T-A
http://www.autonews.com/article/20171105/INDUSTRY_REDESIGNED/171109944/bob-lutz:-kiss-the-good-times-goodbye
======
Overtonwindow
Previous discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15653938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15653938)

------
jdonaldson
The best combustion cars are still ahead of us, just like the best mechanical
keyboards, vinyl turntables, and mechanical watches have turned out to be.

The truth is that most of us are commuting around in econoboxes already,
desperately searching for some form of distraction in the form of music or
podcast. We're not forming some spiritual connection with a machine and the
road, we're yelling at the bozo who can't commit to a lane.

There will be better econoboxes for when those are appropriate, and there will
be more vehicles that are a better expression of our personality. I'm looking
forward to both.

~~~
purplezooey
I dunno. My IBM Model F is unmatched by anything since. I know they are making
them again but haven't tried the new ones.

------
fernly
Shall we insert Robert Heinlein's rant about the automobile[1]?

> Despite the name “automobile” these vehicles had no autocontrol circuits;
> control, such as it was, was exercised second by second for hours on end by
> a human being peering out through a small pane of dirty silica glass, and
> judging unassisted and often disastrously his own motion and those of other
> objects. In almost all cases the operator had no notion of the kinetic
> energy stored in his missile and could not have written the basic equation.
> Newton’s Laws of Motion were to him mysteries as profound as the meaning of
> the universe. Nevertheless millions of these mechanical jokes swarmed over
> our home planet, dodging each other by inches or failing to dodge.

[1] [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/162796/looking-
for...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/162796/looking-for-quote-
about-the-absurdity-of-people-driving-cars#162802)

~~~
senectus1
Only just been introduced to Heinlein. Interesting fellow.

~~~
fernly
Master storyteller. Unfortunately his work has dated because of the advance of
technology: he set his wonderful characters and clever plots in "future"
worlds that, for example, have no computers -- let alone ubiquitous, wireless
communication. So it is sometimes hard to get immersed in his worlds.

------
ryukafalz
The thing about autonomous cars that concerns me is that, if they do become
mandatory, your ability to travel at all will be mediated by whatever
corporation wrote the software and runs the servers. What if they're all
hosted with AWS and there's an outage?

Even if you still own your own car, if that's a Google car, you won't go
anywhere without Google knowing. And what happens if your account gets shut
down?

Free software autonomous cars, anyone?

~~~
confounded
FOSS self driving car systems would be a pretty sensible regulation.

------
Animats
Wow. This is _Bob Lutz_ saying this. _The_ car guy. Exec at GM, Ford,
Chrysler, BMW. Into performance and car styling. If he thinks cars are over,
the auto industry will listen.

~~~
resu_nimda
It kind of reeks of FUD from a cranky old person though. America has an
extremely strong car culture. I don't see the constituency supporting measures
that outlaw human-driven vehicles within 20 years. Forcing people to turn in
their cars? It's just not gonna happen. It will probably take 40+ years after
they've stopped producing vehicles with steering wheels before that even
becomes feasible. And then there will be exemptions, the date will get pushed
back a few times, etc etc.

Another thing that he and a lot of comments about self-driving cars seem to
miss is the roughly 20% of the population that live in rural areas.
Penetration in these areas will lag far behind city centers, and the large
area to cover would make enforcement of a human-driving ban impractical.

~~~
Animats
Having had an entry in the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005, I can say that rural
is easier than urban. Most of the really hard problems in self-driving involve
other road users. Driving on an empty road isn't that tough. You need full
ground profiling, which many of the urban vehicles now don't have.

(When we did our vehicle, we had way too much of the wrong stuff. We were
worrying about having to navigate a field of boulders. Getting high-centered
on rugged roads. Nah. In 2005, all you had to do was stay on the road. The
2004 course was actually harder, and nobody made it past 7 miles. CMU's team
tried to do 2004 by manual mapping. They had people with workstations and
aerial photographs manually plotting a precise route. The vehicle itself was
almost blind. This was the result.[1] "At mile 7.4, on switchbacks in a
mountainous section, vehicle went off course, got caught on a berm and rubber
on the front wheels caught fire, which was quickly extinguished. Vehicle was
command-disabled." \-- DARPA" They plowed right into a sheet metal fence, a
clearly visible obstacle.

Why hadn't the planners, who had paid for custom aerial photos, known about
the fence? Because DARPA didn't want a dumb vehicle that ran on a preplanned
track. The officer in charge of the event, a USMC Colonel, had some men out
the night before the event placing obstacles, just so that trick wouldn't
work.

Anyway, off-road self-driving on bad roads is a solved problem now. Oskosh
sells a system to the military for that. They were thinking that the solution
to guerrilla IED attacks on convoys was one armored vehicle controlling a
convoy of self-driving soft-skinned vehicles. Works, but too much trouble to
set up in a combat zone.)

[1]
[http://overbot.com/grandchallenge/images/race2004/cmucrash.j...](http://overbot.com/grandchallenge/images/race2004/cmucrash.jpg)

------
scythe
The reason shared cars will suck is the same reason shared everything else
sucks: nobody respects public/rental property. Your autonomous taxi might have
been pissed in by the guy before you. And while I like driving, I don't think
it's possible to be _happy_ about this aspect of human behavior.

------
shove
He’s right but the timing is off by a factor of 2 or so. 25 to 50 years. I
mean have you _seen_ US infrastructure recently?

~~~
ecopoesis
Infrastructure can change quickly. In Boston it looks like it took us about 40
years to move from a streetcar dominated system to an auto dominated one. And
that was with two intervening world wars.

~~~
gscott
It wasn't a real natural transition...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

------
itronitron
you can have my human driven automobile when you pry me from it's cold twisted
wreckage

~~~
gscott
That can be easily arranged when the Government sends the signal to the
automated big rig next to you to change into your lane when you are in it.

------
patrickg_zill
Everyone's OK with the govt having a full and complete list of where you have
spent every minute of every day, who you visited, etc.?

~~~
raz32dust
Don't see anyone complaining about Uber and Lyft and Google and Apple knowing
their whereabouts...

~~~
gscott
I know I accidentally left my phone GPS on when Google tells me I am and that
I should take a photo and share it to Google maps.

------
coding123
All of this is hyper-focused on cars. The amount of investment still needed in
this space for SEMIs, RVs, extra-wide SEMIs, etc...

I don't think we'll have complete autonomous driving until we have true AI.
Sure we'll continue to innovate the standard car, but most everything else
will wait.

One of the things I do is drive on roads that have 3-4 inch rocks everywhere
(I drive my truck camper to places far away from humans). How do I tell my
truck to drive 3 inches forward onto a leveling block so that my RV is more
level without a steering wheel, breaks or gas it forward.

RVs specifically have a lifespan of anywhere from 20-40 years - and I'm pretty
sure the owners are not going to suddenly stop driving them.

------
Karunamon
Oddly enough I was watching Minority Report earlier and thinking about this.
Automatic control with cars that all look alike - with a manual mode for when
you are far off the beaten path.

Still, the author is on to something here. There will be no need to own your
own car (and plenty of reasons not to) once ubiquitous on demand automatic
cars are a thing.

Is it bad that I look forward to this time? Driving is one of my least
favorite tasks. Literal years of my life wasted behind the wheel trying to
make sure I don’t accidentally kill someone when I could be doing other more
productive things.

~~~
mholmes680
I thought more the Wall-e dystopia, which fills me with great sadness.

[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/3/36/John-...](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/3/36/John-
wall-e.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140402182827)

------
wankerrific
There must be a fairly good margin on auto-as-a-service else this guy wouldn’t
be hocking it.

I just hope they crash less than my smartphone...or smart tv...or smart
refrigerator... or...

------
Aron
I agree with this 90 year old codger, and that's why Tesla should stay
profitless for another 10 years. The real prize is ahead.

------
abandonliberty
Picking an issue at random:

>A minority of individuals may elect to have personalized modules sitting at
home so they can leave their vacation stuff and the kids' soccer gear in them.
They'll still want that convenience.

I think Bob owns a car. I don't right now, but I've owned a car, motorcycle,
and bicycle. The storage ability is incredibly undervalued.

~~~
AstralStorm
Or overvalued. It is equivalent to two bigger cupboards. Or a few big
luggages.

That is, unless you're driving a pickup truck, actual truck or (sadly) a SUV.

------
Waterluvian
Out of curiosity, how many years was the transition between horse and
automobile? I would bet this will be the same. I don't think it's driven by
technology, I think it's driven by human sociocultural inertia or whatever the
right term is to describe when we irrationally latch on to things.

~~~
itronitron
less than two decades in the US... although I was just thinking yesterday
while driving home that I'd much rather be riding a horse to and from work.

------
bloaf
The 5-year headline is hyperbole. You can't just take the average persons'
second-most-valuable asset, declare that it is worthless, then require an
additional fee for them to use your fancy new podmobiles to get to work (on
top of still having to pay off the auto loan.) The Economy (tm) won't be able
to take it.

Therefore, I think the fancy new railcars cannot become dominant faster than
(1 average car-loan period) after becoming available. The only way to make it
happen faster is if the AI-tomobiles are free for people who still have car
loans or the car companies offer to buy back existing cars for $(exactly
what's left on the consumer's loan.)

So the more reasonable estimate is more like:

5-10 years to availability in (those few special cities)

10 years after that to widespread availability

~5-10 years after that to completely eliminate "the automobile as we know it."

Total: 20-30 years. Which includes Bob's "20-years to total conversion"
estimate.

Let's remember that the first 4G phone came out circa 2008, and now nearly 10
years later, we still don't have anything close to nationwide 4G coverage.

~~~
gscott
This is exactly what the Government does. It is why it exists, to take from
the populous.

[http://www.dot.ca.gov/road_charge/news/](http://www.dot.ca.gov/road_charge/news/)

------
thisisit
> You will enter your credit card number or your thumbprint or whatever it
> will be then.

Here I thought most people had heard of NFC and are going cardless with
Android and Apple pay.

~~~
dboreham
Covered under : "whatever it will be then" ?

~~~
thisisit
But it is already then and most probably with ever connected world that will
be the solution. I don't think he is aware of NFC or any form of "Pay"
applications out there right now.

------
mgarfias
Like hell this will work in the rural areas

~~~
microcolonel
Man, I feel like I'd found a nation just to have the risky and inefficient
wonder of the automobile. The one form of rapid transport which represents
freedom and not tyranny.

I hope this guy is wrong, and people collectively decide that the automobile
is worth human lives and tremendous waste, for my own selfish vision of the
world to remain true.

~~~
ihm
Sitting in traffic, following the same route one follows every day with
hundreds of other commuters hardly seems like freedom to me.

~~~
sssilver
That’s not the only scenario to experience driving.

~~~
Edmond
For most of us that is the experience without exception...I live in the DC
metro area (Baltimore to be specific), I dread even the slightest need to get
into my car because I know it will easily eat up all my time. A 5 minute
errand can easily become a 2 hour ordeal because of traffic.

Go anywhere around the beltway and see cars in every side street and back
alley (never mind actual roads)..you literally cannot leave your driveway on
some of these streets during rush hour.

------
jeffehobbs
Kiss smooth native scrolling goodbye.

~~~
breckenedge
Thank the gods for Reader mode

------
i_feel_great
Also, it is important to consider the ownership of these things now. This
scheme that Lutz envisions must be state-owned and controlled. We cannot trust
Uber and Lyft, or any other monopolist with it.

~~~
JCzynski
Can we trust a state more?

Most likely they will be city-/county-owned, in urban areas, with private
companies handling long-distance and rural areas.

