Don't
worry taxi drivers, this is only a test: Self-driving cars to hit German Autobahn.
A section of the A9 Autobahn in Bavaria will be
converted into a test route for self-driving cars, Transport Minister
Alexander Dobrindt said on Monday.
"We will set up a test stretch on the A9 Autobahn" Dobrindt told
the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview, adding that the first
steps towards the "Digital Testing Ground Autobahn" project would
be taken this year.
Under Dobrindt's plan, the upgraded road will offer infrastructure allowing
the cars to communicate with the road and with other vehicles around them.
"Cars with assisted driving and later fully-automated cars will be able
to drive there", Dobrindt said.
"The German car industry will also be able to be world leaders in
digital cars".
He added that "German manufacturers won't rely on Google" - the
current leader in the field – to produce their own self-driving vehicles.
Cars, Trucks, Taxis
People will not give up their cars. But who needs truck drivers? And who
needs taxi drivers?
I suspect trucking will be the first industry to go mostly driverless.
The Last Mile
Many claim trucks cannot load or unload themselves. Others argue trucks cannot
maneuver around cities. Let's assume those objections are true whether they
are or not.
Here's the simple solution as I have proposed before: Nothing stops a
trucking company from having distribution facilities right off an interstate
near major cities where local drivers deliver the goods the last mile.
Why can't all but the last few miles be driverless even if a skilled driver
is needed some step of the way for safety reasons?
Supply Chain Math
SupplyChain247 reports Fuel Dip “Savings” Offset By Surge in Costs for Drivers,
Equipment, and Healthcare.
Shippers negotiating with carriers over 2015 freight
rates ought not be swayed by the dramatic lowering of diesel fuel costs into
believing their carriers’ overall cost of doing business are lessening. In
fact, they are rising.
A new report by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), an arm
of the American Trucking Associations, confirms what most trucking executives
have been saying publicly for years: trucking costs are rising, with some
components increasingly sharply.
“The cost of finding, recruiting, training and keeping drivers is steadily
rising,” Shevell says. “Equipment costs are through the roof. A new Class 8
truck costs about $135,000. Tires, insurance, terminal costs have all risen
substantially. Plus, we’re hit with rising health care costs for our people.”
The ATRI study, “Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking,” has been
tracking truckers’ costs annually since 2008. It is derived directly from carriers’
financial and operational data and provides a vital benchmarking tool for
both carriers and shippers.
It found the average marginal cost per mile was $1.68 per mile in 2013. That
was a 3 percent increase over the previous year. That compared with $1.45 per
mile in 2009, the start of the recession for the trucking industry.
The single biggest cost driver was drivers, according to ATRI. Average driver
wage per mile was 44 cents in 2013, up from 42 cents the previous year. The
average truck driver benefit cost rose a penny to 13 cents per mile,
according to the study.
That was largely caused by driver pay and benefit increases necessary to
attract and retain drivers in the current tight labor market for truck
drivers, the study concluded.
All
Commercial Driving Will Soon Be Local
Supply chain reported a shortage of 30,000 drivers.
In a few years, I suggest there is going to be little need for long-haul
drivers at all. Nearly all commercial driving will be local.
What About Uber?
The taxi driving company Uber has been banned in many place. I started
accumulating all sorts of links many months ago. I collected well over 20.
Here are a few of them.
In spite of the fact Uber is banned nearly everywhere, the company survives!
Why?
Because Uber is what the masses want.
Rise of the Disruption Economy
Here's a dated article (from October 2012), but it's also timeless in its message:
Rise of the Disruption Economy.
By now, we’ve gotten pretty used to the disruption
that the rise of the social web has created in the media industry, where it
has upended traditional business models and allowed creators of content to
connect directly with their audience. But that same wave of socially-driven
disruption is now moving through the rest of the economy too.
Entrenched industries and regulators are fighting hard.
Coursera, which offers online-education courses, was recently hit with a
regulatory freeze in Minnesota, because the rules for education-related
businesses in that state require that they jump through a series of hoops,
including filing for registration (and paying fees). The state later modified
its views on the service after an uproar about these restrictions, but it is
unlikely to be the only roadblock the company runs into as it tries to
expand.
Airbnb is in a similar position to the hotel industry: the application of
social features — which allow owners of apartments, houses, trailers and even
treehouses to easily find and connect with potential short-term renters — has
changed the balance of power to the point where someone with a spare room has
the ability to create a peer-powered business with virtually no overhead.
That’s clearly a threat to the hotel business, which is using whatever
political and regulatory connections it can to put limits on the company,
even as its grows larger:
Uber, the car-scheduling service, has been another prominent participant in
this back-and-forth struggle with regulations and an entrenched industry —
virtually everywhere the company has set up shop, from San Francisco to New
York, it has run into a regulatory morass that is designed to protect the
existing taxi and livery industry as much as it is intended to protect
consumers.
The service has had problems in San Francisco as well, and is likely to run
into similar issues anywhere there is an entrenched taxi industry that is
trying to protect its historic market power and profit margins. In New York,
for example, taxi “medallions” — which allow an owner to operate a cab
business there — sell for $1 million each. That kind of industry isn’t going
to appreciate a disruptor like Uber, and in New York in particular the taxi
business is a big political player.
Kahn
Academy
Disruptors are universally despised by bureaucrats and existing businesses.
Sal Kahn at the Kahn Academy is another one of those disruptors. Public
union educators do not like his model of free education.
Click on the preceding link to check out free math classes for any grade you
want from "early math" to 3rd grade through 8th grade.
Geometry, trig, calculus, differential equations? Yep, you bet. Science has
41 study topics. The list goes on and on.
Sal Kahn at TED
Please play at least the first couple minutes of the above video. Here's a
link if it does not play: Sal Kahn at TED.
Progress Cannot Be Stopped
No doubt the Fed (central bankers) are deeply disturbed by all of this
price-deflationary progress, as are bureaucrats in general.
- Union teachers do not want to see online
courses take hold or get accredited.
- Taxi drivers fight Uber.
- New York City wants to keep selling taxi
medallions for $1,000,000.
- Hotels fight Airbnb.
It's the biggest protection racket in the world. But progress cannot be
stopped.
Taxi Drivers? Who Need Em?
Interestingly, I think even Uber's model will soon give way for the simple
reason all commercial drivers
will quickly be obsolete.
Uber's model, if it survives, may look something like this.
- Customer pages a cab on his cell phone.
- Cab locates customer via cell phone GPS.
- Customer receives a code back and approximate
wait time.
- Cell phone sends signal to open door when cab
arrives.
For hot locations such as airports where cabs are already waiting, a cab
pulls up and the cab door opens right up with simple tap of a button. A
conductor may be needed to oversee things.
Commercial Drivers? Why?
Communication dispatch with driverless vehicles will eventually handle most
needs.
The above may take a few years longer than trucks, just as fiber or wireless
to homes (the last mile) was once the telecommunication problem.
The Key
Disruptive technology is advancing so fast, that bureaucrats cannot keep up
with it! And that's a good thing. The bad thing is they try.
Additional Reading on Driverless Vehicles
Additional Reading on Free Education
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
