What does the future hold for Motorised Transport?

Petrol and diesel engines will be redundant in just "8 years"

This claim by Tony Seba of Stanford University and RethinkX was a headline in the Irish news this week. He has strong opinions on the future of green energy and the demise of the internal combustion engine.

Resistance to Change

"When the motor age arrived in western countries at the beginning of the 20th century, many conservative intellectuals opposed the increase in motor vehicles on the roads. These increases removed space for pedestrians, and brought a tremendous increase in pedestrian deaths caused by car collisions."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_car_on_societies

Does this rhetoric sound familiar?

A Tipping Point

Mr Seba predicts that the cumulation of developments in Solar Power, Battery Storage, Electric Vehicles and Self Driving cars will result in a tipping point.

"The tipping point will arrive over the next two to three years as electric vehicle battery ranges surpass 200 miles and electric car prices in the US drop to US$30,000. By 2022 the low-end models will be down to US$20,000. After that, the avalanche will sweep all before it."

Mr Seba predicts that by 2025 all new busses, cars, tractors, vans will be electric globally. There will be a residual stock of fossil based vehicles but he predicts that 95% of the Kilometers driven by 2030 in the US will be in autonomous electric vehicles for reasons of cost, efficiency and convenience. He also predicts that Insurance costs will fall.

Radical Change

Not since the early 20th century has transport undergone such a radical change. The move from horse drawn carriage to auto-mobile was much more rapid than initially expected. The turning point at the time was the reduced cost and affordability facilitated by mass produced models such as the Model T.

It is possible that in 15 to 20 years most cars on the road will be electric and self driving cars will be the norm. The turning point today that will enable this to happen in such a short timescale are innovations by companies such as Tesla in battery power and range, and technological advances such as self driving cars.

This has enormous implications for society, how and where we live.

Cars like Tesla will undoubtedly be at the forefront of this change

The Tesla Store in Ireland

Still Sceptical

I wouldn't blame you if your sceptical of these bold claims. They sound like the stuff of science fiction. But lets have a look at what is possible today.
This video by Tesla, may change your mind, the reality is closer than you may think!

Make sure and watch the end of the video. See what happens when he gets to his destination.

Petrol and Diesel Cars will lose their value

Considerations when buying your next car should include; what its useful life is going to be and whether it will have any resale value in a few years.

The mayors of Paris, Madrid, Athens and Mexico City committed to ridding their cities of diesel engines by 2025 to improve air quality, at a meeting of Mayors in Mexico in December. Dublin and many other cities may follow suit.

The implication is that Diesel and Petrol cars will become worthless in the near future. You wont be able to resell them and you may even find it difficult to fill them up.

It's time to give electric cars a serious consideration.

Other Sources

Thank you for reading this. I write on Steemit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Travel and lots of random topics.

The main image for this post is from pixabay.com