Abstract:
Uber Technology President and Chief Operating Officer Andrew McDonald recently stated that in the next 15 to 20 years, the way people travel will completely change. Most people will travel by bicycle, scooter, public transportation or self-driving cars, and no one will own a private car anymore.
No one is going to have a driver's license anymore because you're going to be able to travel freely," Macdonald said in a podcast. "I think bikes and e-scooters are going to be a part of it, self-driving cars are going to be a part of it. Public transportation is going to play a big role in that, but I don't think you have to have a car."
McDonald pointed out that with new car prices soaring 30% in the past six years, it would not be economical for a vehicle to sit idle most of the time.
“Personal cars are one of the least efficient assets people own, regardless of price,” MacDonald said. “Cars sit idle 98% of the day and continue to depreciate. The ongoing operating costs are actually very high – even if you don’t drive, you still have to pay for insurance.”
This transformation may also bring huge benefits to Uber. The online ride-hailing giant has abandoned its plan to develop its own self-driving fleet and instead increasingly positions itself as an operating platform for self-driving vehicles, cooperating with companies such as Waymo and Waabi to connect each other's vehicles to its own service network.
McDonald predicted that technology could eventually revolutionize the way Americans travel and even make driver's licenses unnecessary. This isn’t one of the most alarming visions of the future of work and everyday life.
Uber CEO Khosrowshai has made equally ambitious predictions for his company: In the future, most trips will no longer require human drivers.
“You can imagine that most of our travel orders will be completed by some kind of robot.” Khosrowshai said in a podcast earlier this year. “Maybe it won’t happen in ten years, but in another 15 to 20 years, we will gradually usher in this situation.”
This future may still sound far away, but changes are already beginning to take shape, and self-driving cars are being promoted in many major cities. Uber pays drivers to train artificial intelligence models; Lyft pays to hire former drivers to clean the self-driving vehicles that have begun to take over part of the online ride-hailing business.
Comments