I love electronics but....

Just to prefix this, I'm an IT guy. I love computers and everything you can do with them, but I feel like it's also killing everything I love about the auto industry. I feel like parts of this will start having impact now that more and more automakers are looking into driverless systems, driver assist systems and full electric/solar vehicles.

I feel like we are going to get to a point that we are really creating a lot of unemployed people.

• Batteries will eliminate gas stations and replace with fewer charging stations. The number will likely depend on if we get any good solar panels on car/truck roofs. Also if wireless charging built into roads ever really takes off.
• Truck drivers will be heavily replaced with autonomous vehicles
• Taxi drivers same as above
• Uber/Lyft drivers, same as above
• Tuning companies and shops will dwindle to support what is now just an "out of date" niche enthusiast market. Mostly suspension tuning.
• Little to no need for exhaust shops

I feel like I am missing a few other also.

What is this going to mean for our economy?

I feel like we are going to be losing a lot of jobs, and some will be retrained for other jobs, but overall I feel like a lot less people will be needed. We will need a few people to maintain the fleet of driverless electric cars, but we already have a few people that maintain the gas powered cars. If we only need truck drivers to take the load from the city limits to the drop off point that's it still a lot less man hours.

I'd love to hear people's opinions and feelings about this type of stuff.

Performance shops will just have to change their game. Offer improved motors..batteries... capacitors for full discharge power... other than that, it will be business as usual. But to survive, they need to start looking into adding E cars to their portfolio in the next 5 years.

i agree with the idea a lot of people will be out of jobs. all this tech will replace people especially in the US cause people are lazy and want lots of money for nothing jobs aka $15/hr at mcdonalds. not sure how much it will affect the overall economy but the auto economy will take a huge hit in my opinion. i really doubt performance shops are going to be able to offer much if any benefit to EVs. i feel the people who are buying electric dont care for performance and the R&D that would be needed for those shops to make it into those markets would be too high a cost to substantiate. in result i feel like there will be those auto enthusiasts left over that learn everything from their parents and the rest will fall to the way side while prices for anything related to repairs or performance will be sky high due to there being limited knowledge or skilled personnel.

couple examples...manual cars, not as abundant as they used to be and now most people under the age of 30 have absolutely no idea how to work a stick. any skilled labor position. my dad owns a boat shop near a hugely popular delta in the bay area. there is probably one or two other boatshops within 45 min of him. people still buy and use boats but no one has any idea how to work on them and so he could charge whatever he wanted for labor. he doesnt cause hes not a dick but you get my drift

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UAmach1 said:

Just to prefix this, I'm an IT guy. I love computers and everything you can do with them, but I feel like it's also killing everything I love about the auto industry. I feel like parts of this will start having impact now that more and more automakers are looking into driverless systems, driver assist systems and full electric/solar vehicles.

I feel like we are going to get to a point that we are really creating a lot of unemployed people.

• Batteries will eliminate gas stations and replace with fewer charging stations. The number will likely depend on if we get any good solar panels on car/truck roofs. Also if wireless charging built into roads ever really takes off.
• Truck drivers will be heavily replaced with autonomous vehicles
• Taxi drivers same as above
• Uber/Lyft drivers, same as above
• Tuning companies and shops will dwindle to support what is now just an "out of date" niche enthusiast market. Mostly suspension tuning.
• Little to no need for exhaust shops

I feel like I am missing a few other also.

What is this going to mean for our economy?

I feel like we are going to be losing a lot of jobs, and some will be retrained for other jobs, but overall I feel like a lot less people will be needed. We will need a few people to maintain the fleet of driverless electric cars, but we already have a few people that maintain the gas powered cars. If we only need truck drivers to take the load from the city limits to the drop off point that's it still a lot less man hours.

I'd love to hear people's opinions and feelings about this type of stuff.

Click to expand...

You're talking about something that is still pretty far away. I'd say at least 25-30 years out. The cost of electric cars would have to go way down as well.

Everything is just an estimate right now. Nobody knows when autonomous vehicles will actually hit the street mainstream. Yes, testing on a small scale has been done. But that's it. I don't like the idea of autonomous vehicles based on the idea that electronics can be exploited and controlled remotely. I'm also in IT. Despite our jobs being with electronics and computers, I'd say our job security is pretty safe judging on the employees knowledge of computers at my current company. Just saying.

We are less than four years out from Volvo; Ford; GM and Toyota offering Autonomous. Tesla has it and it works fantastic. The next round of electric cars will be priced right where their gasoline powered counterparts are. We are there man. Performance shops need to adapt or die. There is just as much money to be made by rebuilding an electric motor to output more torque as their is the rebuild a v8. Suspension..batter upgrades...wrapping cars has really taken off, and is 90% profit. Things like that will keep the car nuts and those that supply to the car nuts happy.

If you can soup up a Golf cart... you can do the same to an electric car.

[ame]

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HISSMAN said:

We are less than four years out from Volvo; Ford; GM and Toyota offering Autonomous. Tesla has it and it works fantastic. The next round of electric cars will be priced right where their gasoline powered counterparts are. We are there man. Performance shops need to adapt or die. There is just as much money to be made by rebuilding an electric motor to output more torque as their is the rebuild a v8. Suspension..batter upgrades...wrapping cars has really taken off, and is 90% profit. Things like that will keep the car nuts and those that supply to the car nuts happy.

If you can soup up a Golf cart... you can do the same to an electric car.

Click to expand...

Less than 4 years for fully autonomous cars? No driver input whatsoever? I doubt it

Ebm said:

Less than 4 years for fully autonomous cars? No driver input whatsoever? I doubt it

Click to expand...

Tesla is already there across their whole vehicle lineup. The other companies I mentioned are in the advanced testing phases. I get the shareholder reports for many of them, and you would be surprised at how close we are.

https://www.volvocars.com/us/about/...isafe/intellisafe-autopilot/this-is-autopilot

http://www.thedrive.com/tech/17083/...esla-autopilot-vs-gm-supercruise-head-to-head

Toyota testing
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/27/16373058/toyota-research-institute-self-driving-car-luminar

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HISSMAN said:

Tesla is already there across their whole vehicle lineup. The other companies I mentioned are in the advanced testing phases. I get the shareholder reports for many of them, and you would be surprised at how close we are.

https://www.volvocars.com/us/about/...isafe/intellisafe-autopilot/this-is-autopilot

http://www.thedrive.com/tech/17083/...esla-autopilot-vs-gm-supercruise-head-to-head

Toyota testing
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/27/16373058/toyota-research-institute-self-driving-car-luminar

Click to expand...

Wow, that's kind of scary. I don't think people will trust an autonomous car for awhile. I wouldn't.

An autonomous car still makes me nervous since computers are flawed.

My Dad and a co-working have road around in a Tesla with autopilot, and they said they were cautious at first, but became very comfortable quickly.

Humans are flawed too. And not everyone will use it, but I would wager that a lot will.

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HISSMAN said:

My Dad and a co-working have road around in a Tesla with autopilot, and they said they were cautious at first, but became very comfortable quickly.

Humans are flawed too. And not everyone will use it, but I would wager that a lot will.

Click to expand...

That was my whole point to my last post. Computers are flawed because they are made by humans.

I would probably try out auto-pilot, but I love driving too much to quit driving. Especially since I row my own gears. I do like all the features in the Model 3 though.

This entire thing is going to be kicked off in a MAJOR way with the baby boomers. They won't have to worry about when to "give up the keys"... long as they can get in and out the car, they are good to go. And they can live where they want for much longer, without the need to drive.

People with disabilities... major for them.

I can't wait until I can get in the car at 10 pm and be anywhere by the time I wake up the next morning.

Tuning shops? Seriously? Some idiot will ALWAYS want to do something crazy to a car... hackers/tuners/same difference. Hell, they will come up with stuff you can't think about. Hell I'd LOVE to hack my self-drive car to do donuts with the push of a button or hack it to drift. I'd never try to drift, but it would be fun to have that experience. There is just way too much that can be done. I'd hack it to drive on two wheels... I'm sure a computer could do it.

Gas stations? People still need to eat/pee/walk the dog/change baby/etc. Gas stations will have a different purpose... heck, even now many only have one or two employees.

I'm looking forward to the future... want a job? Get into robotics.

Our lives will transform. Humans always adapt. Every time we have major change people freak out. Jobs we never thought of will come to light and you and I will be thinking "why didn't I think of that".


I can't wait for the future.

What I'm really curious about is how will this change the DUI law?

It won't. You still need to be able to take control of the car at any moment. Most DUI laws have already been amended to this. Or have a broad description such as "the person behind the wheel". Having said that, I can see that in the next 25 years, even that could change.
[MENTION=27452]Ebm[/MENTION]
This isn't anything negative, but just a sociology experiment.. How old are you? The older a person is, the more changes they have seen. I have found that most people around the age of 25 have a harder time grasping how fast technology can change things. When I graduated high school, mobile phones were just being made available to the public, so I remember a world with no concept of walking around with a phone in your pocket. Just in the past 25 years, look how far we have gone. Heck, just in the last 10 years.. 10 years ago, there was no such thing as an iphone..

HISSMAN said:

It won't. You still need to be able to take control of the car at any moment. Most DUI laws have already been amended to this. Or have a broad description such as "the person behind the wheel". Having said that, I can see that in the next 25 years, even that could change.
[MENTION=27452]Ebm[/MENTION]
This isn't anything negative, but just a sociology experiment.. How old are you? The older a person is, the more changes they have seen. I have found that most people around the age of 25 have a harder time grasping how fast technology can change things. When I graduated high school, mobile phones were just being made available to the public, so I remember a world with no concept of walking around with a phone in your pocket. Just in the past 25 years, look how far we have gone. Heck, just in the last 10 years.. 10 years ago, there was no such thing as an iphone..

Click to expand...

You were pretty close lol. I'm 27. And yes, I agree. Even though I'm in the IT field and do a lot with technology outside of work, I can't quite grasp how fast technology can change. It can be overwhelming trying to keep up with every new change that comes out. Sometimes I just want to unplug for awhile.

I hear you on the unplugging..ha ha! I'm 40 and I can't imagine the changes that a 70 year old must have experienced.