No Drivers Required....ANYWHERE
By now, everyone has heard of autonomous cars and the quest by many companies to get them on the road. At the same time, we hear about autonomous buses, trucks, and, even, cargo ships. Now we can add bulldozer to the list of vehicles that will not require a driver at some point.
Built Robotics, a start up company, has recently unveiled a bulldozer that requires no driver. This is one of the first forays, that I am aware of, into the mainstream construction industry. Operating earth moving equipment is a dirty and dangerous job, at time even fatal. It is quite obvious the dangers that can lurk on any type of construction site. Anytime monotonous work is automated, safety tends to go up.
Here is a video that was released by the company on their Youtube channel.
Over the past few weeks, we saw reports that Waymo, Google's self driving car division, is going to have a fleet of autonomous taxis on the streets in a city in Arizona by the ends of the year. This is the most aggressive time line I have seen although not the only one. Elon Musk stated earlier this year that he will drive from LA to NYC in a car totally on Autopilot mode.
Regardless of whether these targets are met, the outcome is clear: driving is going to disappear. The last year witnessed the autonomous world move past theory. Now, we are quickly approaching implementation. I would say in another year, autonomous vehicles will be something fairly common in sense we do not find them "alien". While it will take the better part of a decade before we see these vehicles making up the vast percentage of units on the road, we can see the acceleration process already starting. Transportation for hire, long haul trucking, and other cargo moving services will be the first areas we see this technology penetrate.
I am going guess that kids just starting elementary school will not even be given the option of getting a driver's license. By the time they reach that age, driving will be akin to the rotary phone.
Very cool stuff. Now I can't wait for autonomous lawn mowers 🤣
I havent looked but John Deere and other Ag equipment manufacturers were at the forefront of autonomous technology.
I would not be surprised if Deere had one of them already.
Amazon sells robot ones for 300-700 lol
I bet there are like the roomba. Gps would be the key. I see that they are $2000 on Amazon. Wow. I guess I'll have to do more posting if I want one of those bad boys... Hehe
Nah I seen them 400-700 lol check out dhgate too.
NEW TECHNOLOGY is the winner
You say decade? I bet in 3-4 years 90% of cars will electric self driving cars. Which personally I think is awesome, Us people who like gas hot rods can still drive them without less regular people caring, hands down though, I can not wait to get a tesla.
In the US, the average age of a car is 11 years...it is a long cycle so I dont see it in the time frame you are proposing.
Even electric, only accounts for 1% of the US new car market. I foresee exponential growth in that arena but it still falls short of 90%. We will be lucky to see 1/3 the new cars sold in 3-4 years being electric.
I mean you realize that electric cars will be much cheaper than gas cars in that time frame. They will be way cheaper. Way cheaper than any 5-10 year old average merc, bmw caddy ect. Cheaper than maintaining a old truck or van ect. I really hands down make the bet they will be pouring out till most cars are electric then all those factory will turn to making components for robots/space. The shear size of manufacturing buildins/goals with what elon and vw alone are doing will see that done. Its going to happen fast just like the adoption of block chain tech. Its still new today, tomorrow it will be in past lol
Cheaper than any 5-10 year old average Merc?
Let me see the 5-10 year old car is paid for, the EV has to be purchased...
How exactly is it cheaper?
As for Elon, he is doing great things but your numbers are way off. There ar roughly 85M new cars sold in the world. Elon's Tesla, which I own stock in as a disclaimer, will be lucky to be doing 1M-1.5M new cars a year in 3 years time and he is the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in the world.
To get to roughly 76 million new cars in the next 3-4 years, the EV market would require over 2000% growth annually....there were 750K sold around the world in 2016...even 100% annual growth only puts that at 6M in three years.....nowhere near the 90% you propose.
I appreciate your optimism and it is the future, but not in three years. It will take a decade to filter through.
Elon is not the only one doing this. Not to mw tion the second you switch the other auto dealers it will quick. Maybe longer than 3. But when the self driving cars out your going to have vehicles that last longer and don't get in accidents near is often that's won't need replacing or fixing anywhere near as often.
Not to mention other forms of transportation that will become popular in the coming yeara as
Human need not apply.
That's the kind of story ZeroHedge.com would have picked-up on.
Would have been a pleasure to repost it. lol