We can fight it, but the tipping point for self-driving cars is near
Connected the Dots on the Self-Driving Car
Those smarty-pants Millenials grew up on the Internet with the answer to any question literally at their fingertips. Now Generation Z — the cohort following the Millennials — are growing up on Uber and at the click of a button someone will show up at their door and take them wherever they want or need to go.
The data shows that fewer and fewer teens are even getting a license. A University of Michigan study reflected this trend, showing that “For 16- through 44-year-olds, there was a continuous decline in the percentage of persons with a driver’s license . . . ” How much of a decline? In 1983, nearly 92% of 20- to 24-year-olds had their license, while in 2014 only 76.7%, are opting to get their ticket to freedom.
Now, add in the Baby-Boomers, who will be forced to hand over the keys in larger and larger numbers in the coming years as their motor skills and eyesight inevitably decline (part of our Aging of the Population theme), and what do you have left? Us Generation X’ers sitting in the middle holding on to their retro American muscle cars with Springsteen’s Born to Run blaring, all the while we inefficiently burn gas, change lanes and clog up the highways with our inability to navigate the zipper-merge or the dreaded 4-way stop!
We’ll be continuing to connect the thematic dots at Tematica through Tematica Investing and Tematica Insights — energy production, auto production and maintenance, remote monitoring., etc — but the themes impact are vast with the transformational change that is coming. In the meantime: . . .”tramps like us, baby we were born to runnnnnn!!!!”
Uber Technologies Inc.’s plans to collaborate with Volvo on autonomous vehicle is just the latest plan from an automaker for self-driving cars.
Source: Beyond Uber, Volvo and Ford: Other automakers’ plans for self-driving vehicles – LA Times
