Quote:
Originally Posted by mkoesel
Quote:
Originally Posted by c63er
He does make one mistake. Autonomous cars are not the end of the manual. Innovation can make a transmission switchable between manual and automatic control of manual.
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True, but most timelines have ubiquitous EV adoption as a nearer reality than widespread autonomous vehicle use. And EV drivetrain designs are all converging on a single speed transmission. So, by the time we have vehicles that drive us around, the EV will already be well on the way to obsoleting the ICE and the multispeed transmission with it. |
A good thought. However EV timelines are significantly flawed as they make several assumptions and are projections based on a small cohort of initial sales.
What we see around us now is the small cohort of initial sales. As we know from other industries there is a large gap between initial sales booms and widespread adoption which comes at a much slower rate. Much slower.
For example the iPhone X may have sold 50 million phones since launch which sounds like a lot but there is a massive chasm between that and widespread adoption. It's market share is somewhere between 2 and 8%. It's like that for every product.
One must also account for the serious cost and environmental impact of these cars. And the elephant in the room, we cannot produce nearly enough batteries to use to replace very car with EV.
It all sounds good but is still very much a pipe dream until we see further significant progress in battery technology and also a new generation of humans born and then raised in an EV society (which is the current generation). You will likely be able to buy a gas car for the rest of your life if you choose too.