Will the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles and electric powertrains send gas prices into a downward spiral, render car ownership obsolete, and cause masses of used cars to be abandoned" These are the outcomes forecast by a controversial, widely discussed paper published earlier this year, predicting what it calls a ?Big Bang disruption? triggered by the approval of autonomous vehicles for widespread use on public roads. This is a turning point that the study claims could arrive as soon as 2021 with the introduction of vehicles that, as it defines them,?will drive themselves with no human mechanical input (no pedals or steering wheel).?
Tony Seba, who with James Arbib published the study for their think tank, RethinkX, says its basis is ?purely economic??a distinction that many tech reporters have failed to make. Their study and its jarring vision of the future should serve as a wake-up call to the complacent. It centers around the transition of the personal-vehicle market to a new economy of transportation as a service (TaaS), and it crunches some of the numbers and projects what might happen to the market in a rapid transition. The study involves many controversial assumptions, the boldest perhaps being the assertion that by 2030, or within 10 years of regulatory approval of autonomous vehicles, 95 percent of U.S. passenger-vehicle miles will be traveled by autonomous electric vehicles and that these will be owned by fleets offering services, not by indivi...