How the dream of self-driving cars became an absolute nightmare

It can be hard to keep up with the multitude of bad decisions and scandals just in the auto industry, but a story from New Republic manages to tie everything together and boy, isn’t that a tough look at our shared predicament.

It argues that the reason our self-driving utopia hasn’t arrived is because it was never really supposed to be. Instead, the promise of self-driving cars is just a ploy to prevent cities from building public transportation, something American scientists have been aiming for since the first mass production of cars. the first to create an entirely new industrial galaxy. From Republic:

In 2018, The New York Times report about how the Koch brothers are using the driverless car vision as part of their fight against public transportation. Billionaire libertarians and longtime fossil fuel allies have funded Americans for Prosperity to organize dozens of campaigns in cities and states around the country to stop it. measures that cause extra money for transportation services. One of their main arguments is that public transport is outdated and a waste of money because self-driving cars are only a few years away. Five years later, we’re still waiting for the self-driving revolution—but the Koch brothers’ misconceptions about public transportation still linger.

In the mid-2010s, Elon Musk’s Boring Company went across the country sells cities on car tunnels as a solution to their traffic problems, but rarely offers any tangible product. Take Fort Lauderdale: The city needed a new train tunnel and went to the Boring Company. But once the agreement has been signed in 2021, the Boring Company instead sold the city not to build a train but to build a tunnel for Teslas to the beach. As of earlier this year, nothing has been built and local media have reported that the deal could have died.

The most seriously wrong solution could be Hyperloop. The modern version of this concept was proposed by Musk a decade ago as a pure hypothesis. Musk, a known public transit hater, sees it as a way to reduce support for California’s planned high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. “It seems Musk made the Hyperloop proposal just to get the public and legislators to rethink bullet trains,” reporter Ashlee Vance wrote in her 2015 biography of Musk. “He didn’t really intend to build that thing.” Musk’s last hope? Vance explained: “High-speed rail will be cancelled.

by Elon Musk distance for public transport well known, although you wouldn’t really expect a person who sells luxury cars for personal use to turn into a pig on public transit would you? Well, instead of solving our transportation pollution problem (that is worse), our car accident problem (it is still very bad), or our car ownership problem (that’s more expensive than ever), instead, technological geniuses created cars that could create an entirely new industry; data industry. Product is you, the car ownerWhether you like it or not:

All that data about that vehicle comes with its own privacy concerns. The Driver Privacy Act 2015 only covers data on Car Event Logger—not everything else they’re creating. There have been several attempts to get a congressional caucus together to check the problem, but it hasn’t gone far, nor is there an alternative through a comprehensive federal data privacy bill. The European Union is actively examining data in cars and plan to create rules to cover it upbut legislators there haven’t gone far either—and as the law tries to catch up, automakers are continuing to put more and more new technology into our vehicles.

The internet connection required for in-car data collection also enables another business model: subscription services. Automakers are now expecting drivers to spend monthly or yearly money on car features instead of just choosing the things they want when they buy. This doesn’t just happen to one or two companies, but all the major players. BMW is charging activate hot seatMercedes is doing the same thing with accelerate fasterTesla charges for Additional connectivity featuresand GM has big plans to expanding its subscription service—and the revenue from them—in the years to come.

From self-driving promise turned cold at the rise of subscription-based features in the car to Oversized EV pollutes as much as an ICE sedan, the future of transportation looks pretty bleak. Perhaps it is time to stop allowing self-interested parties to wield so much influence in public policy. Of course, just build damn trains Nor is it an easy task.

Full story can be found This.