In article
<6386119a-a980-42f8-8234-c674a8d4b152@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Willie.Mookie@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> What Ford found though when they did market studies was that car sales
> would plummet along with profits. Why? Because personal buyers
> would more than likely disappear as they went to high quality taxi
> services that didn't have to pay drivers, and they'd have a large
> number of high quality cars sitting around available at little over
> cost.. Fleet buyers would dominate and about 1/4 the number of autos
> would be sold. It would end congestion, and be more efficient - but
> it would kill the auto-industry. So, you don't see it.
And you know all this how?
Let me offer three reasons not to believe it.
1. Ford was not and is not the majority of the auto industry. If they
can produce a driverless car, they will have a much larger share of that
market--even if it is a smaller one.
2. Switching to taxi services doesn't reduce the number of miles driven
per year--indeed, if they are more convenient, it increases the number.
Most cars, so far as I can see, end up wearing out. So if the average
car is good for a hundred thousand miles and total driving is (say)
10^12 car miles/year, about ten million cars a year will be purchased.
So it wouldn't be a smaller market but a bigger one.
3. One of my colleagues was involved over a period of several years with
the project to try to design an intelligent highway--a modern system
along the lines you describe, with cars computer controlled. They
eventually gave up. If it isn't practical now, with current computer
technology, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that it was practical
fifty years ago.
Or in other words, you believe it because it is a good story.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now
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