This past week I had an opportunity to address the Detroit Economic Forum on the topic of “Leading in an Era of Exponential Change.” As a professional futurist, one of my responsibilities is to help people envision future scenarios which may be fundamentally at odds with their current thinking. (As I wrote in this piece, however, my job is not to predict the future. Rather, I lay out a range of future scenarios.)
To this end, I encouraged my audience to give serious consideration to the idea that within a decade’s time driver-less cars could be a fast growing niche within the automotive sector.
Here are just a few reasons why such a scenario is possible. First, younger people are growing increasingly dependent on being connected. To the extent that the car of the future becomes a hyper-connected, wireless platform (and I believe it will), younger people may more easily relinquish control of the steering wheel to a robotic-driven car because they will prefer to stay connected with their friends and social networks rather than concentrate on the road.
Secondly, the fastest growing segment of the population within a decade’s time will be people 85 years and older. To the degree that these seniors want to maintain their independence but are unable to drive (due to poor eyesight, early-stage dementia, etc.), they may be forced to rely on driver-less vehicles.
Third, the U.S. Military has made it clear that it would prefer to rely on driver-less vehicles for many of the dangerous transportation jobs our soldiers must currently undertake in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result of this mandate, the military may expedite advances in driver-less vehicles which could eventually find their way into the commercial marketplace. Finally, I also think it possible that farmers who are faced with growing labor shortages may come to rely more on driver-less tractors, and these advances could similarly translate into the broader automotive commercial marketplace.
Now, I understand all the legal, regulatory and political roadblocks to driver-less cars but I also foresee a number of major trends pushing society in this direction. My only point with this post is to encourage you not to dismiss the idea simply because it falls outside of today’s norms. The future has a funny way of changing on us.
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