‘Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap’ Bob Lutz

CNBC recently asked me to comment on a study showing that people don’t want to buy an autonomous car because they would be scared of it. They don’t trust traditional automakers, so the only autonomous car they’d buy would have to come from Apple or Google. Only then would they trust it.

My reply was that we don’t need public acceptance of autonomous vehicles at first. All we need is acceptance by the big fleets: Uber, Lyft, FedEx, UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, utility companies, delivery services. Amazon will probably buy a slew of them. These fleet owners will account for several million vehicles a year. Every few months they will order 100,000 low-end modules, 100,000 medium and 100,000 high-end. The low-cost provider that delivers the specification will get the business.

These modules won’t be branded Chevrolet, Ford or Toyota. They’ll be branded Uber or Lyft or who-ever else is competing in the market.

The manufacturers of the modules will be much like Nokia — basically building handsets. But that’s not where the value is going to be in the future. The value is going to be captured by the companies with the fully autonomous fleets.

By Bob Lutz – former vice chairman and head of product development at General Motors. He also held senior executive positions with Ford, Chrysler, BMW and Opel.

http://www.autonews.com/article/20171105/INDUSTRY_REDESIGNED/171109944/bob-lutz:-kiss-the-good-times-goodbye

Many thanks to Bob G. for sharing.

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