Future of Transportation Archives - Futurist Speaker

The Airship That Watches Everything — and Never Has to Land

Thomas Frey — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 21:18:30 +0000

A solar airship at 52,000 feet, flying for days without fuel-
quietly redefining persistent observation and reshaping how we watch the world.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Somewhere above the coast of Brazil last week, a 270-foot solar-powered airship was floating in the stratosphere at 52,000 feet, watching. Not a satellite. Not a drone. Not a plane. An autonomous, unmanned airship that had been aloft for twelve days, powered entirely by sunlight during the day and lithium-sulfur batteries at night, maintaining its position with a station-keeping radius of less than a kilometer.

It had departed Roswell, New Mexico on March 25th and traveled 6,400 miles across the Gulf of Mexico and into Brazilian airspace before completing its mission on April 6th with a controlled descent into international waters. No pilot. No fuel stops. No refueling. Just the sun, the wind, and a platform that is quietly rewriting what persistent aerial observation means for the planet.

The company behind it is called Sceye — pronounced “sky” — and what it’s building may be one of the most consequential technologies nobody outside the aerospace world is paying attention to yet.

What Sceye Actually Is

The concept isn’t entirely new. The US government spent billions of dollars in the 1990s and early 2000s trying to build a stratospheric airship capable of sustained station-keeping at high altitude. Every attempt failed. The technology simply wasn’t there — the materials were too heavy, the batteries couldn’t store enough energy to survive the night, and the engineering challenges of maintaining pressure and position through the violent temperature swings of the day-night cycle defeated every program that tried.

What changed was materials science. Graphene and advanced composites made the envelope light enough. Lithium-sulfur batteries reaching 425 watt-hours per kilogram made night operations viable. Solar cell efficiency crossed a threshold that made the energy math work. Sceye’s founder, Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen — a Danish social entrepreneur better known for building mosquito net and water purification businesses for developing nations — read about high-altitude platform systems through a NASA technology transfer program and realized that several previously impossible things had quietly become possible.

He started the company in 2014, built a nine-foot prototype in 2016, scaled iteratively to 70 feet, then larger, then larger again. By 2021 the airship reached the stratosphere for the first time. In 2024 it completed a full day-night power cycle in the stratosphere — the milestone that proved the energy system actually worked. This spring’s 12-day mission to Brazil was the next step: proving the platform could sustain operations over multiple day-night cycles far from home base, over a range of atmospheric conditions, at stratospheric altitude.

The company’s first pre-commercial test flight is scheduled for this summer in Japan, in partnership with SoftBank, demonstrating high-speed connectivity from the stratosphere for emergency and disaster response. The long-term goal is an airship that can stay aloft for up to 365 days continuously.

A permanent, solar-powered platform hovering at the edge of space. Watching everything below it. Forever.

Stratospheric platforms fill the gap: satellite-scale coverage with aircraft-level detail—unlocking real-time monitoring, connectivity, and surveillance across regions no system could previously reach.

Where the Biggest Opportunities Are

The stratosphere sits at a uniquely valuable altitude. High enough to see hundreds of square miles simultaneously. Low enough to resolve detail that satellites cannot. Above commercial air traffic. Above the weather. Below the orbital mechanics that require satellites to keep moving rather than staying fixed over one location.

That combination unlocks applications that neither satellites nor conventional aircraft can currently serve.

Environmental monitoring is the one that’s already generating commercial traction. Sceye’s infrared sensors can detect methane emissions from oil and gas operations with a resolution of one meter — compared to the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5 satellite, which sees methane in pixels each representing seven square kilometers. The difference is the difference between knowing there’s a pollution problem in a region and knowing that well number 62 from a specific company has been leaking 68 kilos of methane per hour for the last twelve minutes. In a test flight over New Mexico last year, Sceye identified a single super-emitter in Texas releasing an estimated 1,000 kilograms of methane per hour — the equivalent of 210,000 cars running simultaneously. That data went to the EPA.

Wildfire detection is equally compelling. A persistent stratospheric platform can watch thousands of square miles continuously, identifying heat signatures and smoke patterns within minutes of ignition rather than waiting for a satellite pass or a fire lookout to spot the smoke column. In a world where wildfire behavior is becoming increasingly severe and unpredictable, early detection measured in minutes rather than hours changes the entire response calculus.

Telecommunications access for underserved regions is the application that attracted SoftBank. Sceye’s SceyeCELL antenna performs real-time beam forming from the stratosphere, delivering high-speed connectivity across vast areas without the infrastructure investment that terrestrial networks require. For regions with no cell towers — remote coastlines, disaster zones, island nations, frontier territories — a single Sceye platform provides coverage that would otherwise require years and billions of dollars of ground-based infrastructure to build.

Beyond those, the platform is a natural fit for maritime surveillance — tracking illegal fishing, monitoring shipping traffic, watching for smuggling across vast ocean expanses where no radar network reaches. Precision agriculture monitoring across regional scales. Hurricane and severe weather observation from above the storms rather than through them. Arctic and Antarctic observation for climate science. Border monitoring. Oceanic health assessment. The list extends as far as the applications of persistent, high-resolution, wide-area observation extend — which is very far indeed.

The Dangers Worth Understanding

A platform this capable of observation is also, by definition, a surveillance platform. The same technology that watches methane leaks can watch people. The same resolution that identifies a specific gas well can identify a specific vehicle, a specific individual, a specific gathering of people.

The question of who operates these platforms, under what legal framework, with what oversight, and with what constraints on the data collected is not a question the technology answers. It’s a question societies will need to answer before the platforms become as common as the applications suggest they could become. The regulatory frameworks for stratospheric platforms are almost entirely undeveloped. The airship operates above the altitude where standard aviation regulations apply, but below the altitude of orbital satellites, which have their own legal regime. The gap between those two frameworks is where Sceye currently operates, and it’s a gap that will require deliberate governance as the industry matures.

There are physical risks too. A 270-foot helium-filled vehicle descending from 52,000 feet carries real hazard to whatever is below it if something goes wrong. Sceye’s controlled termination of this mission into international waters reflects careful planning around that risk — but commercial operations over populated areas, ocean shipping lanes, and sensitive ecosystems will require failure mode analysis that goes well beyond current aviation standards.

Helium supply is a genuine long-term constraint. Helium is a finite, non-renewable resource. A world with thousands of stratospheric airships in continuous operation would put significant pressure on helium supply chains that are already under strain. Hydrogen is the obvious alternative — vastly more abundant, producible renewably — but hydrogen’s history with lighter-than-air flight includes a disaster that shaped public perception of the technology for nearly a century. Solving the hydrogen safety problem for stratospheric operations is technically tractable but not trivial.

When Will Average People Experience This?

The honest answer is that average people will experience the effects of this technology long before they experience it directly.

The methane monitoring that prevents a super-emitter from pumping greenhouse gases for months undetected — that’s an invisible benefit most people will never attribute to a stratospheric airship. The wildfire that gets caught at two acres instead of two thousand because a persistent platform spotted the heat signature at 3am — same thing. The disaster response that delivers cellular connectivity to a hurricane-devastated community within hours of the storm passing — real and significant, largely invisible.

Direct public access to stratospheric platforms is further out. The technology is currently uncrewed and purpose-built for observation and communications payloads. There is no Sceye equivalent of the passenger jet — the airship’s operating environment is simply too hostile for human occupants without engineering investments that haven’t been made and aren’t currently planned.

The path to passenger stratospheric vehicles exists — several companies are working on stratospheric balloons that can carry small groups to near-space altitudes — but those are fundamentally different vehicles from what Sceye is building. Sceye’s platform is infrastructure, not transportation. It’s the equivalent of a cell tower or a weather satellite, not an aircraft.

What’s more likely is that within five to ten years, the applications Sceye enables become woven into infrastructure people interact with daily. Environmental compliance systems. Emergency response networks. Agricultural monitoring services. Maritime tracking. The stratospheric platform disappears into the background as invisible infrastructure — noticed only in the results it makes possible, not in the vehicle floating 52,000 feet above your head.

A decade of quiet iteration beat billions in failed attempts. Now solar airships work—and soon, they’ll change how the world is continuously observed.

The Bigger Picture

What Sceye has accomplished — a solar-powered, autonomous airship maintaining stratospheric altitude through multiple day-night cycles across 6,400 miles of open ocean and varied atmospheric conditions — is an engineering achievement that deserved significantly more attention than it received.

The US government spent decades and billions of dollars failing to do exactly this. A startup from New Mexico, founded by a Danish humanitarian entrepreneur with no aerospace background, figured out why those attempts failed, waited for the materials science to catch up, and built the thing iteratively and carefully over ten years.

The applications are real. The technology works. The commercial deployment is imminent.

Somewhere above Japan this summer, a 270-foot solar airship will begin demonstrating what persistent stratospheric observation looks like at scale. The world below it will look quite different through those sensors than it does from any vantage point we’ve had before.

The Great Transportation Shakeout: When Cars, Drones, and Airlines Collide

Thomas Frey — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 19:25:56 +0000

Autonomous cars and drones are redrawing the map—
airlines now compete with every technology that moves people door to door.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

The Assumption Nobody Questions

When you need to travel 500 miles, you assume you’ll fly.

It’s faster, right? Three hours in airports plus one hour in the air beats eight hours driving. The math is obvious.

Except the math is changing.

What if the car drove itself while you slept? What if you could work the entire trip without cramped airplane seats? What if you could leave at 11 PM, sleep through the night, and wake up at your destination at 7 AM—no airports, no security, no boarding?

What if a drone could pick you up from your driveway, fly you 300 miles in 90 minutes, and land at your destination’s driveway—no terminals, no parking, no luggage claim?

Within five years, autonomous vehicles and pilotless drones will fundamentally reshape the competitive landscape of transportation. And commercial airlines are about to discover they’ve been competing in the wrong category.

They thought they competed with other airlines. They actually compete with any technology that moves people from Point A to Point B.

And they’re about to lose a lot of those competitions.

The Three-Hour Tipping Point

Here’s the vulnerability in commercial aviation: trips under 500 miles are miserable experiences with minimal time savings.

Los Angeles to San Francisco: 400 miles. Flight time: 1 hour 15 minutes. Total trip time including security, boarding, taxiing, baggage claim, ground transportation: 4-5 hours.

Now consider the autonomous vehicle alternative in 2028:

Summon car at 10 PM. Sleep in fully reclining seat. Wake at destination at 6 AM. Total trip time: 8 hours. Time you were awake and dealing with travel: 20 minutes.

Which is actually more convenient?

The autonomous vehicle becomes a mobile hotel room. You’re not “traveling” for 8 hours—you’re sleeping for 7.5 hours and getting 20 minutes of productive time before and after.

The airline experience requires you to be awake and actively managing logistics for 4-5 hours, plus you still need a hotel at your destination.

For business travelers especially, the calculus shifts dramatically. That 8-hour overnight autonomous trip means you arrive rested, at a specific address, with no airport hassle, for a fraction of the cost.

Prediction: By 2030, autonomous vehicles will capture 40% of commercial airline traffic for trips under 500 miles. By 2035, that grows to 70%.

Airlines will fight back with price cuts, but they can’t compete on convenience. You can’t sleep comfortably on a plane. You can’t avoid security theater. You can’t get dropped at your actual destination.

Pilotless drones eliminate airports—turning 200-mile trips into quick, driveway-to-driveway hops that could erase regional airlines.

The Drone Disruption

Pilotless drones solve a different problem: they’re faster than cars but avoid airports entirely.

Current aviation drones (2026) can carry 400-600 pounds—enough for 2-3 passengers with minimal luggage. Range: 200-400 miles depending on battery technology. Speed: 100-150 mph.

By 2029, improved battery technology and hybrid-electric systems extend range to 600 miles at 180 mph.

The value proposition: vertical takeoff and landing from your location to your destination. No runways. No terminals. No security.

The 200-mile sweet spot: Drones dominate trips of 150-300 miles where they’re dramatically faster than cars but airports make planes impractical.

New York to Philadelphia: 95 miles. Currently a 2-hour train ride or 2.5-hour drive. Drone: 35 minutes driveway to driveway.

San Francisco to Sacramento: 90 miles. Currently 1.5-hour drive in traffic or expensive short flight. Drone: 30 minutes.

Chicago to Milwaukee: 90 miles. Drive: 2 hours. Drone: 35 minutes.

For these distances, drones are unbeatable. No infrastructure needed—just a small landing pad in your driveway and one at your destination.

Prediction: By 2032, drones capture 60% of trips in the 150-300 mile range currently served by regional airlines and short-haul flights. By 2035, regional airlines serving these routes effectively cease to exist.

The Overnight Autonomous Revolution

Here’s where it gets interesting for longer distances: the willingness to travel overnight.

Currently, driving 600 miles (10 hours) is exhausting. You lose a day to travel. It’s cheaper than flying but the time cost is prohibitive.

Autonomous vehicles eliminate that calculation. You’re not losing a day—you’re sleeping through travel time you’d lose anyway.

The new long-haul calculation:

Boston to Chicago: 1,000 miles. Flight: 2.5 hours plus 4 hours airport/logistics = 6.5 hours total. Cost: $300-500.

Autonomous vehicle: Depart 9 PM, sleep, arrive 9 AM. 12 hours total, 11.5 sleeping. Cost: $80-120 in electricity plus vehicle fee.

You save $200-400 and arrive rested without airport hassle. The “time cost” is just the 30 minutes of awake time managing the trip.

Business travelers will do this calculation and choose autonomous vehicles for any trip they can schedule overnight.

Families will choose it because four people in an autonomous vehicle costs the same as one person, while four airline tickets quadruple the cost.

Prediction: By 2033, autonomous vehicles capture 25% of overnight-schedulable trips in the 600-1,000 mile range. By 2037, that grows to 45%.

This doesn’t kill airlines for these routes—but it forces massive price cuts that destroy profitability.

By 2037, autonomous overnight travel captures nearly half mid-range trips—forcing airlines into profit-crushing price wars.

Who Wins in Each Distance Category

0-150 miles: Autonomous cars dominate completely. Drones are overkill for short distances. Planes never made sense. Cars win by default.

150-300 miles: Drones win decisively. Fast enough to beat cars significantly, convenient enough to beat planes completely. Regional airlines collapse.

300-500 miles: Split between drones (for speed) and autonomous vehicles (for cost and luggage capacity). Airlines retain some business travel but lose leisure travel almost entirely.

500-800 miles: Autonomous vehicles overnight become the preferred option for price-sensitive travelers. Drones compete for daytime travel where speed matters. Airlines retain business travelers who can’t travel overnight.

800-1,500 miles: Airlines retain majority share but face serious autonomous vehicle competition for overnight-schedulable trips. Pricing power collapses.

1,500+ miles: Airlines maintain dominance. Autonomous vehicles can’t compete on time for cross-country trips. Drones lack range. Airlines safe here.

The Timeline of Disruption

2027-2029: Early Adoption Phase

Autonomous vehicles available in major metro areas
Pilot programs for overnight autonomous travel
First commercial passenger drones operating in limited markets
Airlines ignore the threat, focusing on traditional competition

2029-2031: Market Testing

Autonomous overnight travel proves popular with early adopters
Drones expand to 20-30 major city pairs
First regional airline bankruptcies
Major airlines begin acknowledging competitive threat

2031-2033: Acceleration

Autonomous vehicles ubiquitous in developed nations
Drone networks connect 100+ cities
Airlines slash prices on routes under 500 miles
Business model stress becomes visible in airline earnings

2033-2035: Shakeout

Regional airlines largely extinct
Major airlines abandon most routes under 400 miles
Airline consolidation intensifies
Hub-and-spoke model partially collapses

2035-2037: New Equilibrium

Airlines focus on 1,000+ mile routes and international travel
Drones dominant for 150-500 miles
Autonomous vehicles dominant for overnight-schedulable trips
Three distinct transportation markets with minimal overlap

The Regulatory Battles

None of this happens smoothly. Airlines will fight.

FAA Resistance: Expect the airline industry to lobby heavily for drone regulations that make them impractical—altitude restrictions, noise limits, flight path requirements that force drones to behave like small planes.

Outcome: Delayed but not prevented. Drones too useful. Public pressure forces sensible regulation by 2030.

Airport Subsidies: Regional airports will demand government support as traffic collapses. Some will receive it, delaying the inevitable.

Outcome: Taxpayer money wasted propping up obsolete infrastructure, but market forces win eventually.

Safety Theater: Airlines will highlight every autonomous vehicle accident and every drone malfunction, demanding stricter regulations.

Outcome: Backfires when data shows autonomous vehicles are 10x safer than human drivers and drones have better safety records than small aircraft.

Union Resistance: Pilot unions will fight pilotless drones. Driver unions will fight autonomous vehicles.

Outcome: Delaying tactics work for 3-5 years, then collapse as economic pressure becomes overwhelming.

Airlines run on hubs and schedules; autonomous cars and drones win with driveway departures, on-demand timing, and frictionless convenience.

Why Airlines Can’t Compete on Convenience

The fundamental problem for airlines: they’re built on a 20th-century hub-and-spoke model that requires:

Expensive infrastructure (airports, runways, terminals)
Security screening (unavoidable post-9/11)
Centralized departure points (hub cities)
Fixed schedules (can’t leave when you want)
Standardized routes (point-to-point requires massive demand)

Autonomous vehicles and drones have none of these constraints:

No infrastructure needed (roads already exist, drones use driveways)
No security screening (private vehicles)
Departure from anywhere (your driveway)
Leave whenever you want (on-demand)
Point-to-point for any route (no minimum demand threshold)

Airlines can compete on speed for long distances. They cannot compete on convenience for any distance or cost for short distances.

The Winners and Losers

Winners:

Tesla/Waymo/Chinese EV makers: Whoever dominates autonomous vehicles captures enormous market. Tesla’s lead in autonomous driving technology positions them well.

Drone manufacturers: Companies like Joby Aviation, Archer, Lilium compete to dominate the 150-500 mile market. Winner-take-most dynamics likely.

Battery technology companies: Range and recharge speed determine competitiveness. Breakthrough in battery tech creates winner.

Real estate near drone pads: Properties with drone landing capability gain significant value premium.

Consumers: More choices, lower costs, better convenience.

Losers:

Regional airlines: Essentially extinct by 2035.

Major airlines on short-haul routes: United, American, Delta lose 40-60% of domestic revenue by 2037.

Regional airports: Traffic collapses, subsidies can’t sustain them, many close.

Airport-adjacent businesses: Hotels, parking, rental cars serving short-haul travelers disappear.

Pilot profession: Demand for commercial pilots drops 30-40% by 2037.

In transportation’s shakeout, regulatory speed—not technology—may decide whether China or the West captures the future.

The International Wild Card

This analysis assumes U.S./European regulatory environment. China might move faster:

China scenario: Government prioritizes autonomous vehicles and drones as strategic industries. Regulations streamlined. Infrastructure built rapidly. Full deployment by 2030, five years ahead of West.

Result: Chinese companies dominate technology, export globally, capture market before Western companies fully deploy.

Implication: The transportation shakeout might be won or lost based on regulatory speed, not technology quality.

What This Means for You

If you’re planning travel in 2030:

Book flights only for 1,000+ miles or international
Use drones for 150-500 miles when time matters
Use overnight autonomous vehicles for 500-1,000 miles when cost matters
Own nothing—subscribe to transportation services on-demand

If you’re investing:

Short airline stocks serving regional routes
Long autonomous vehicle manufacturers
Long drone manufacturers
Long battery technology
Short regional airport real estate

If you work in aviation:

Retrain for long-haul operations or exit industry
Regional airline jobs disappearing first
Pilot profession shrinking but not disappearing

The Twenty-Year View

By 2045, commercial aviation looks radically different:

60% smaller than 2025 measured by passenger-miles
Focused almost entirely on 1,500+ mile routes and international
Ticket prices 40% higher on remaining routes (loss of economy of scale)
Regional airlines extinct
Hub airports downsized, many closed
Different industry—luxury long-distance travel, not mass transportation

The competitive landscape that seemed stable for 70 years reshuffles completely in 20 years.

Not because airlines got worse. Because alternatives got dramatically better.

That’s how disruption works. The incumbent doesn’t fail—they just become irrelevant for most use cases.

Welcome to the transportation shakeout. Choose your vehicle carefully.

Related Articles:

The Economics of Urban Air Mobility – Analysis of drone transportation markets

Autonomous Vehicles and the Future of Long-Distance Travel – RAND study on AV adoption patterns

Why Regional Airlines Are Disappearing – Economic analysis of small-market aviation

The post The Great Transportation Shakeout: When Cars, Drones, and Airlines Collide appeared first on Futurist Speaker.

The Open Road, Reimagined: How Autonomous Teslas Are Rewriting the American Road Trip

Thomas Frey — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 08:49:44 +0000

The journey begins—technology fades into the background as the mountains take center stage.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Arrival

Jake Walker watched his wife Linda’s face light up as their plane descended into Denver International Airport. Below them, the Rockies stretched like a jagged spine across the horizon, peaks already dusted with October snow.

“I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” Linda said, gripping his hand. “A whole week. Just us and the mountains.”

“And approximately seventeen different Teslas,” Jake added with a grin.

It was October 2029, and they were about to experience something that had become wildly popular in the past eighteen months: a fully autonomous multi-destination tour. No rental car to return. No worrying about mountain driving or parking. Just a seamless chain of self-driving vehicles that would appear exactly when needed and disappear when they didn’t.

Their luggage arrived at carousel 7 within twelve minutes of landing. As Jake pulled the last bag off the belt, Linda’s phone chimed.

Your Tesla has arrived. Bay C-14. Welcome aboard, Jake and Linda.

The white Model Y was waiting exactly where the app indicated, rear hatch open, interior lights glowing warmly in the late afternoon sun. As they loaded their bags, the car’s voice—neutral, pleasant—greeted them.

“Welcome to your Rocky Mountain Experience. I’m your vehicle for the next forty-seven miles. Estimated arrival at your Lakewood accommodation: 52 minutes, accounting for current traffic. Would you like to begin the regional audio tour, or would you prefer music?”

Jake and Linda exchanged glances. “Let’s start with the tour,” Linda said. “We can always switch.”

“Tour activated. We’ll begin once we reach I-70.”

For the first time, neither of them touches the wheel—and neither misses it.

The Drive Begins

The Tesla merged onto Peña Boulevard with the confidence of a driver who’d made this trip ten thousand times—because, collectively, the fleet had. As they accelerated toward the mountains, a warm voice filled the cabin.

“You’re entering what the Arapaho people called ‘the spine of the world.’ The Front Range you see ahead was formed roughly 70 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny, when tectonic forces pushed ancient rock upward…”

It had assumed a historical tour, but could have switched to an architectural tour, ghost tour, musical tour, or dozens more. Jake could have even selected a futures tour, or an alternative futures tour.

“This is actually good,” Jake murmured. “Better than that awful podcast you made me listen to on the flight.”

Linda swatted his arm. “That podcast won an award.”

“For most effective sleep aid?”

Twenty minutes in, Linda tapped the screen. “Can we switch to music? Something local?”

The tour voice faded. A moment later, John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” filled the car.

“Oh, that’s perfect,” Linda said, leaning back in her seat. “God, when’s the last time we actually relaxed on a trip? Not worrying about directions or traffic or Jake’s terrible navigation skills?”

“I have excellent navigation skills. I just prefer the scenic route.”

“You got us lost in a mall parking garage.”

“That parking garage was poorly designed.”

The Tesla climbed steadily into the foothills, the city falling away behind them. Neither Jake nor Linda touched the controls. The car handled everything—speed adjustments for curves, lane positioning, the subtle brake as a deer bounded across the road ahead.

“You know what’s weird?” Jake said. “I don’t miss driving. I thought I would, but I don’t.”

“That’s because you’re not stressed. You’re not white-knuckling the wheel wondering if that semi is going to drift into our lane. You’re just… here.”

First Night

The Airbnb in Lakewood was a renovated craftsman with a view of the mountains. As they unloaded their bags, the Tesla’s voice chimed softly.

“Your belongings are secured. I’ll be departing to my next assignment. When you’re ready for dinner, simply request a vehicle through the app. Enjoy your evening.”

The car backed out of the driveway and disappeared down the street.

Two hours later, freshened up and hungry, Linda tapped her phone. “Requesting pickup for two. First stop: Creekside Cellars winery, then Elway’s Downtown.”

Vehicle arriving in 4 minutes.

A different Model Y—identical but for the license plate—pulled up exactly on schedule.

The winery was tucked into a converted barn, strings of lights crisscrossing the outdoor patio. They tasted six wines, bought three bottles, and learned more about Colorado viticulture than either expected.

“The trick is the elevation,” the sommelier explained, refilling their glasses. “We’re at 5,800 feet. The intense UV light makes the grapes develop thicker skins, more concentrated flavors. We can’t compete with Napa on volume, but on complexity? We hold our own.”

“How do you handle tourists?” Jake asked. “This place seems remote.”

“Used to be a problem. Now?” She gestured to the parking area where four Teslas sat silent and dark. “People come from Denver for an afternoon, no designated driver stress. Business tripled once the autonomous network got reliable. We even added a second tasting room.”

At Elway’s, they ordered steaks and recounted the day. The restaurant hummed with conversation—anniversary couples, business dinners, a family celebrating someone’s graduation.

“We should do this more,” Linda said, cutting into her filet. “Not wait for retirement to actually see things.”

“Agreed. Though I’m still processing that we’ve been in three different cars and haven’t signed a single rental agreement.”

After dinner, they stopped at Hammond’s Candy Factory for dessert. The shop smelled like caramelized sugar and childhood. They bought chocolate-covered toffee and watched through the windows as workers pulled ribbon candy on massive hooks.

Back at the Airbnb by 10 PM, they sat on the porch with wine and toffee, watching the mountains fade to silhouettes against the darkening sky.

“Tomorrow’s the big drive,” Jake said. “All the way to Steamboat.”

“I’m ready. No stress. Just scenery.”

Every morning is a new experience when taking a Tesla Tour.

Into the Mountains

The next morning’s Tesla arrived at 8:47 AM, exactly on schedule. Their bags went into the back, they climbed in, and the car began the climb toward I-70.

The audio tour narrated their ascent through the mountains—the history of the Eisenhower Tunnel, the ecology of the alpine tundra, the mining towns that rose and fell with silver strikes. As they crested the Continental Divide, Linda gasped.

“Stop the tour for a second. Jake, look at this.”

The valley spread below them, a tapestry of aspen gold and pine green. The car had automatically slowed, as if it knew they’d want to look.

“Photos don’t capture this,” Linda said softly.

“No. They really don’t.”

They passed Dillon Reservoir—the tour explaining how it was created in the 1960s, how the town of Old Dillon was relocated, how the water supplied Denver—before the highway curved north toward Steamboat Springs.

The Tesla deposited them at the temporary bag storage facility at the Steamboat resort. A cheerful attendant scanned their luggage tags.

“We’ll have these delivered to your hotel by 4 PM. Car will be waiting whenever you need it. Enjoy the springs!”

The hot springs were everything promised—natural mineral water, mountain views, the pleasant exhaustion of heat soaking into tired muscles. They spent three hours alternating between hot pools and cold plunges, reading, dozing, not checking email.

“This is why we needed this trip,” Linda said, head tilted back against the pool edge. “When’s the last time you went three hours without looking at your phone?”

“When I forgot it at the airport in 2019?”

“Exactly.”

That evening, they summoned a car to the storage facility. Their bags were already loaded. The new Tesla took them to their hotel—a ski lodge converted for year-round operation—and they had dinner at a local steakhouse where the server recommended the elk medallions and told them about Steamboat’s ranching history.

No parking stress, no logistics—just mineral springs and mountain air.

The Northern Loop

The next three days blurred into a rhythm: wake, coffee, summon car, drive, marvel, repeat.

The route to Jackson Hole took them through landscapes that seemed designed by someone with a flair for drama. The Tetons rose like teeth against the sky. In town, they browsed art galleries and ate at a barbecue joint where the owner, a former California tech worker, explained why he’d left Silicon Valley.

“I was writing code for apps I didn’t care about. Now I smoke brisket. Better life.”

From Jackson, they drove to Devils Tower—the audio tour explaining the geology, the Native American legends, the climbing routes up the igneous intrusion. They walked the trail around the base, necks craned upward.

“It’s like something from another planet,” Linda said.

“130 climbers have gotten stuck up there since the 1930s,” the tour voice informed them. “All were eventually rescued.”

“That’s… not as reassuring as you think,” Jake muttered to the car.

Yellowstone consumed two full days. They saw Old Faithful erupt. Watched bison cause traffic jams. Photographed the Grand Prismatic Spring’s impossible colors. Each new Tesla that picked them up came with the same seamless handoff—bags automatically transferred to the next vehicle, no keys, no paperwork, just continuity.

At a pullout overlooking the Yellowstone River canyon, they met another couple doing the same tour.

“Minneapolis,” the woman introduced herself. “Sarah and Tom. We’re on day nine.”

“How’s it been?” Linda asked.

“Incredible. We’ve been in, I don’t know, maybe twenty different cars? Never waited more than five minutes for one. Never worried about parking or navigation. Just… went places.”

“That’s exactly it,” Tom added. “We’re not planning. We’re experiencing. Yesterday we decided to add an extra day in Cody, changed the whole itinerary in about thirty seconds on the app. Try doing that with a rental car.”

History feels closer when you’re not rushing to return a rental.

The Black Hills

The drive from Yellowstone to the Black Hills was the longest leg—seven hours—but the Tesla made it manageable. They stopped twice for lunch and leg-stretching, the car automatically routing them to charging stations that had restaurants and clean bathrooms.

“Remember road trips with your parents?” Jake asked as they rolled through Wyoming grasslands. “Trying to hold it for hours because the next rest stop was disgusting?”

“And your dad insisting we could make it another hundred miles on fumes?”

“Different era.”

The Black Hills welcomed them with pine forests and granite outcrops. They stopped at Prairie Berry Winery—South Dakota’s largest—and tasted wines made from local fruits: rhubarb, chokecherry, buffalo berry.

“I’m not even pretending to be a wine snob anymore,” Jake said, buying a bottle of the cranberry blend. “I just like what tastes good.”

The woman processing his payment laughed. “You’d be surprised how many people say that. The autonomous tours have been amazing for us. People stay longer, drink more, don’t worry about driving after. We’re adding a restaurant next spring.”

Mount Rushmore was smaller than they expected and more moving. The evening lighting ceremony—rangers spotlighting each president while narrating their contributions—left Linda wiping her eyes.

Crazy Horse, still unfinished after seventy-six years, was more impressive for its ambition than its completion.

“When it’s done,” the tour guide explained, “it’ll be the largest sculpture in the world. The entire heads on Rushmore could fit inside this horse’s head. Assuming we finish. Could be another fifty years.”

“That’s insane,” Jake said.

“That’s vision,” the guide corrected. “Sometimes you start something knowing you won’t see it finished.”

The Return

The drive back to Denver felt different. Not sad exactly, but thoughtful. The Teslas carried them through the mountains they now felt they knew—not as tourists but as visitors who’d paid attention.

Their first stop was Boulder, for an early dinner at The Kitchen, Kimbal Musk’s farm-to-table restaurant on Pearl Street. The Tesla dropped them at the temporary bag storage facility downtown—bags tagged and scanned in under a minute—then disappeared to its next assignment.

The restaurant was everything the reviews promised. Exposed brick, reclaimed wood, an open kitchen where chefs worked with ingredients sourced from Colorado farms. Their server, a CU student named Maya, walked them through the menu.

“Everything changes seasonally,” she explained. “Right now we’re featuring roasted butternut squash from Jack’s Solar Garden in Longmont, lamb from Ollin Farms in Hygiene. The chef gets deliveries three times a week.”

Linda ordered the wild mushroom risotto. Jake chose the grass-fed beef short rib.

“You know what’s interesting?” Jake said, watching the kitchen through the pass. “A week ago we were eating at chain restaurants because they were easy to find. Now we’re seeking out places like this.”

“That’s what happens when you’re not stressed about driving. You have energy to actually choose.”

The food was extraordinary—complex without being fussy, ingredients that tasted like they’d come from actual soil rather than industrial farms. Halfway through dinner, Kimbal Musk himself walked through the dining room, stopping at tables, asking about dishes, listening to feedback.

When he reached their table, Linda complimented the risotto.

“Best I’ve had outside of Italy,” she said.

Kimbal smiled. “That’s because our mushrooms were picked this morning, forty miles from here. You can’t fake freshness. Real food, real flavor, real connections to the land. That’s the whole point.”

“We’re on an autonomous tour,” Jake mentioned. “Week through the Rockies. This felt like the right place to finish it.”

“Those tours have been incredible for us,” Kimbal said. “People used to skip Boulder because parking was impossible. Now they just… come. The car handles it. We’ve seen a thirty percent increase in tourists who actually have time to eat slowly, enjoy the experience. Technology serving humanity rather than the other way around. That’s how it should be.”

After dinner, they walked Pearl Street—the pedestrian mall buzzing with street performers, college students, families—before summoning their next Tesla.

On nights like this, even the best technology disappears—leaving only music, stone, and memory.

Their final stop was Red Rocks Amphitheater, carved into sandstone formations that turned crimson in the sunset. The combined Botticelli Strings and Ed Sheeran concert filled the natural bowl with sound that seemed to come from the rocks themselves.

“This,” Linda said during intermission, “this is what I’ll remember. Not the hotels or the restaurants. This moment. This place.”

Jake squeezed her hand. “We should come back. Make this regular.”

“Deal.”

The final morning, they found Snooze—a Denver breakfast institution famous for its pancakes and morning cocktails. The place was packed with locals and tourists, the energy of a city waking up.

Their last Tesla arrived at 10:30 AM to take them to DIA. As they loaded their bags—the same bags they’d loaded nine days earlier—Linda turned to Jake.

“So. Verdict?”

“On what?”

“This whole autonomous tour thing. The future of travel. All of it.”

Jake thought for a moment as the car merged onto Peña Boulevard, the mountains receding in the rearview mirror.

“I think we just saw the death of the rental car industry and the birth of something better. Easier. More accessible.”

“Explain.”

Wild landscapes unfold while the network handles everything else.

Why This Changes Everything

The autonomous tour model works because it solves problems travelers didn’t realize were dealbreakers until someone eliminated them.

The Hidden Tax of Traditional Road Trips

When you rent a car, you’re not just paying for the vehicle. You’re paying in stress: navigating unfamiliar roads, finding parking, worrying about damage, calculating mileage limits, fighting over who drives, dealing with return logistics. You’re paying in opportunity cost: the person behind the wheel isn’t experiencing the scenery. You’re paying in inflexibility: once you commit to a rental, changing plans means renegotiating contracts.

The autonomous tour eliminates all of it.

The Economics Are Compelling

A week-long car rental in 2029 costs roughly $850, plus gas, plus insurance, plus parking fees that can hit $40 per night in resort towns. Total: around $1,400.

An autonomous tour—using on-demand Teslas with per-mile pricing—costs about $890 for the same trip, with electricity included. No insurance fees. No parking charges (cars leave when you don’t need them). No stress premium.

But the real value isn’t in the $500 savings. It’s in what you gain.

The Freedom Paradox

Counterintuitively, having a car you own for the week makes you less free. You’re tethered to it. You have to plan around parking. You can’t drink at wineries. You can’t both enjoy the scenery.

On-demand autonomous vehicles make you more free precisely because you don’t control them. They appear when needed. Disappear when they don’t. You’re not managing a car. You’re experiencing places.

The Network Effect

The tour only works because of scale. Tesla’s fleet in the Rocky Mountain region in 2029 includes roughly forty thousand vehicles in constant rotation. When Jake and Linda summoned a car in Steamboat, it might have just dropped off another couple in Vail. When they left the hot springs, their car drove itself to pick up a family in Breckenridge.

Maximum utilization. Minimum waste. No cars sitting idle in parking lots for twenty-three hours a day.

The Cultural Shift

Within three years, the autonomous tour model expanded from niche experiment to mainstream option. The Rocky Mountain Experience was one of forty-seven curated autonomous routes across North America by late 2029.

The Pacific Coast Highway tour. The Fall Foliage Loop through New England. The Music Cities Circuit through Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans. The National Parks Grand Circle. Each one optimized for scenic value, charging infrastructure, and tourist density.

Traditional rental companies adapted or died. Hertz and Enterprise pivoted to managing autonomous fleets. Budget and Thrifty disappeared entirely, unable to compete.

The change happened faster than anyone predicted because it made traveling easier, cheaper, and better. That’s a rare combination.

The Accessibility Revolution

The most profound impact wasn’t economic. It was social.

People who couldn’t drive—too old, too young, disabled, anxious about highway driving—suddenly had access to experiences previously closed to them. A grandmother could tour wine country without relying on family. A blind couple could “road trip” with full independence. Teenagers could explore national parks without parents.

The car ceased being a barrier and became an enabler.

The road trip ends, but the freedom it revealed lingers.

The Morning After

At the airport departure curb, Jake and Linda stood with their bags, waiting for the check-in line to thin.

“We’re doing this again, right?” Linda asked. “Maybe New England in October next year?”

“Already looking at dates.”

A white Tesla pulled up to the curb, discharged a young couple with hiking gear, and drove off to its next assignment.

“You know what I keep thinking about?” Jake said. “That couple we met at Yellowstone. They changed their whole itinerary in thirty seconds. Just… decided to stay an extra day somewhere they liked. When’s the last time we could do that?”

“Never. There was always some constraint. Rental return deadlines. Hotel cancellations. Logistics.”

“Right. And now there’s not. The infrastructure just… accommodates. That’s what’s different. The technology doesn’t make you adjust to it. It adjusts to you.”

They checked their bags, cleared security, and found their gate. On the monitor, their flight showed on time.

Linda pulled up the photo from Red Rocks on her phone. The amphitheater glowing in the sunset, Ed Sheeran on stage, the crowd a sea of phone lights and raised hands.

“I want to remember something,” she said quietly.

“What’s that?”

“That this trip wasn’t about the cars. The cars were just… invisible. In the best way. This trip was about us, finally paying attention to what we were seeing instead of how we were getting there.”

Jake nodded. “The technology disappeared. That’s when you know it’s working.”

Their flight boarded twenty minutes later. As the plane climbed above Denver, Jake looked down at the mountains, the highways threading through them, the invisible network of autonomous vehicles shuttling people toward experiences they’d remember long after they’d forgotten which car they rode in.

The open road hadn’t died, he realized. It had just been reimagined. And it was more open than ever.

Related Articles:

The Economics of Autonomous Vehicle Tourism – Analysis of how self-driving vehicles are transforming the travel industry

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving: Capabilities and Limitations – Current state and trajectory of autonomous driving technology

How Autonomous Vehicles Are Reshaping Rural Tourism Economies – Research on the economic impact of autonomous tours on rural communities

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Bridging the Darién Gap, the Final Piece of the Pan-American Highway

Thomas Frey — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 12:45:00 +0000

Bridging the Darién Gap, the Final Piece of the Pan-American Highway

In 2015, I was speaking at a Quebec Transportation Authority event in Montreal on the future of transportation. The attendees included transportation experts from around the world, including Colombia Transportation Minister Natalia Abello Vives, whom I happened to sit next to at lunch.

Meeting her was a unique opportunity for me to discuss one of my favorite topics – the Darién Gap, a 60-mile-long, nearly impassible stretch of jungle, mountains, and rivers between the nations of Colombia and Panama that stands in the way of land vehicles traveling between South America to North America. About half of the Darién Gap lies in each country.

In 1937, the Pan-American Highway agreement was signed by 14 countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Canada, and the United States. These nations agreed to build a highway that would extend from the southern tip of South America to the northern tip of Alaska – a 19,000-mile-long continuous highway.

Eventually, all the sections were built – except through the Darién Gap.

The Historical Obstacles

Back in 2015, Minister Abello explained that the Darién Gap was an environmentally sensitive piece of land, and it would be impossible to build a highway through it. She has a point. Much of the land along the completed highway segments on either end of the Gap has been stripped of trees and other vegetation to allow for cattle farming.

The last major effort to build a continuous road through the Darién Gap was in the 1970s when the U.S. proposed to put up two-thirds of the cost. Environmentalists concerned with deforestation and health experts concerned about the spread of hoof-and-mouth disease raised their respective objections, and the issue was dropped.

The More Recent Obstacles

The Darién Gap, connecting Yaviza Panama on the north end and Turbo Colombia on the south side, can be traversed on foot in a four-to-six-day, very arduous, dangerous trek. The once-desolate jungle is no longer a no-man’s land. A steady stream of migrants from Haiti, Venezuela, and other countries make their way through it as they try to reach the southern border of the U.S.

Along the way, they’re preyed upon by drug smugglers, exploited by both right- and left-wing guerilla groups, and threatened by deadly insects and snakes. Bad people and bad things seem to be attracted to the lawless nooks and crannies of the Darién Gap.

But while the Colombian government may have been (and maybe still is) open to the idea of a road or other means of transit through this stretch, apparently, the Panamanian government and the people of Panama are less excited about it. They see the Darién Gap as a fortunate buffer that keeps the criminals on the Colombian side, even if it’s increasingly porous.

It would be interesting to know the U.S. government’s current position on the completion of the Pan-American Highway, given how it could make migration from South America easier.

Bridging Around the Gap?

I asked Minister Abello if all the options had been explored for spanning the Darién Gap. As we discussed some engineering concepts, she suggested that building a series of bridges over the ocean waters off the coast was a possibility.

Of course! If you can’t go through it, go around it! We could call it the Darién Gap Bypass.

Currently, the longest bridge-tunnel system in the world is the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, which is 34 miles long. The bridge around the Darien Gap would need to be roughly twice that long.

Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge

I have no doubt engineers could figure out how to construct this massive series of bridges, and yes, the cost would be astronomical. The bigger issue would be the political pros and cons of making it easier for illegal aliens and drug trafficking problems to make their way through Central and South America as well as the southern borders of the U.S.

Costs and Benefits

Is there a good reason to span the Darién Gap or bypass it with a bridge system?

Would a completed Pan-American Highway promote commerce between North and South America, for example? Perhaps, but the vast majority of intercontinental trade with South America happens by ship, and it’s doubtful that it would be economically feasible to replace that with truck traffic to reach North America.

However, there may be many other ways of looking at this. A single truck from Central America could make dozens of stops along the way into South America, replenishing supplies at all the businesses along the way. From a micro-economic viewpoint, truckloads of goods traveling 100-200 miles could cause local economies to grow in ways we may not understand.

And what about the psychic pleasure of being able to take that uninterrupted 19,000-mile road trip? Is that reason enough to make this kind of expenditure? That kind of expedition would quickly make its way to my bucket list, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

But there are bigger and better reasons for taking this on.

Moonshots

We seem to have grown beyond the idea of doing big things “because we can.” Taking moonshots for the sake of simply achieving moonshots just doesn’t seem right these days for many of the pragmatists among us.

Just over 60 years ago, President Kennedy inspiringly justified the nascent NASA mission to the moon, saying, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” How long ago and far away that seems today.

But doing the hard things is only part of the reason for building the Darién Gap Bypass. Some incredible advances in science, manufacturing, and engineering have been tertiary results of seemingly unrelated major endeavors, including the space program.

The Darién Gap Bypass wouldn’t be just a long, expensive bridge. It could lead to major breakthroughs in bridge design, metallurgy, off-shore platform design, and many other less-apparent areas that could make a huge difference over the coming decades.

At the moment, though, we have a lot of immediacy on our plates, and we’re not willing to invest in seemingly impossible tasks and moonshots. We seem obsessed with solving the problems of the day, paying scant attention to advancing civilization as a whole.

But let’s hope we get back to a time and mindset where we stop living solely for the day and do a few hard things that have the potential to vastly improve our future.

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The Extraordinary Economic Benefits of the Tesla Semi

Thomas Frey — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 11:45:00 +0000

The Extraordinary Economic Benefits of the Tesla Semi

After 3+ years of delay due to pandemic-related supply chain issues, Elon Musk has announced that the first deliveries of the Tesla Semi will happen before the end of this year. This truck is still an operator-driven vehicle, not fully autonomous yet, although the Tesla Semi will have semi-autonomous driving technology built in to improve safety and driving efficiency.

In spite of Musk’s statement, many industry observers believe the release date will be in 2023. He has a lot on his plate at the moment, but many of us watching this space hope his trucks hit the road sooner than later.

Regardless of the date, this is welcome news. The extraordinary economic and environmental benefits of this technology certainly suggest a rapid transition to electric semis in the very near future.

Tesla isn’t alone in this space. Volvo Trucks, Nikola, and others are preparing to deliver their own electric trucks and Daimler already has their version on the road.

The Operational Economics

A back-of-the-envelope calculations making the rounds in the blogosphere demonstrates the incredible economic benefits of the Tesla Semi, and by extension, Tesla’s competitors as well.

At today’s fuel prices, the cost to move a block of freight 200 miles in a diesel-powered semi is $170, compared to $28 in electricity costs for a Tesla Semi. That’s an 84% savings, which yields a payback period of around two years, according to the company.

Tesla claims that big rig maintenance and repair costs will be reduced as well, given Tesla Semi’s simpler, less-mechanical operating systems.

Tesla Semi batteries will initially provide a range of 500 miles and can be recharged in roughly 2 hours using Tesla’s Megacharger, a technology the company promises to deploy widely. By 2025, the range will likely double and the recharge time, cut in half.

Government Incentives Add to the Value

Musk claims he doesn’t need government incentives and tax credits to make his Tesla Semi cost-effective. But provisions in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act certainly will make the economics even more appealing, provided the vehicles from Tesla and the other U.S. electric semi-truck manufacturers qualify with respect to their use of parts and batteries made in the U.S.

Under the new law, purchasers of a qualifying heavy-duty electric truck will be eligible for a $40,000 tax credit – which may represent as much as 15% of the cost of the typical diesel-powered semi-truck – although the sticker price for many of the electric versions still remains a bit murky.

Additionally, major states, including New York and California, are offering voucher programs to rebate a portion of the cost of heavy-duty electric semi-trucks purchased in their states.

Where Will All That Electricity Come From?

Some observers are skeptical about the environmental benefits of electric vehicles (EVs), and they may have a point … up to a point. How is generating the electricity to power an electric semi-truck necessarily less environmentally damaging than the operation of the diesel-powered big rig itself? That depends, of course, on how the electricity that’s charging the electric semi-truck is generated.

We dove deep into that issue in a future of energy column earlier this year. And since that time, given Russia’s increasing weaponization of oil and natural gas, I’ve become more convinced than ever that our future energy sources must be centered around nuclear power – especially the new technologies related to thorium-based reactor systems. If the electricity delivered from our vehicle charging stations comes from nuclear and other non-polluting sources, we truly will reap all the environmental benefits from shifting to electric semi-trucks.

Those benefits will be huge. Commercial freight and trucking account for one-fifth of the fuel used in the U.S., and that proportion is on the rise. This transportation mode is on track to account for 40% of the increase in demand for oil in the next 10 years, according to International Energy Agency, an international non-governmental organization.

Other Benefits from Electric Semi-Trucks

And if the economic and environmental benefits aren’t enough, consider these other advantages of electric semi-trucks:

We’ll have reduced noise pollution in urban areas, not to mention the highways.
With that reduction in noise, it will be possible to develop housing communities closer to city centers along highways and major routes. This will slow the encroachment of suburbs on vacant open spaces.
The Tesla Semi and its counterparts will be easier and more comfortable to operate, likely increasing the attractiveness of the truck-driving profession. According to the American Trucking Association, the U.S. was short 80,000 truck drivers in 2021, which is expected to double by 2030. Electric semi-trucks will slow and possibly reverse that trend.
The fuel efficiency and reduced operating costs of electric semi-trucks will put downward pressure on consumer prices since transportation costs can represent as much as 10% of the price of a consumer good.
Electric semi-trucks reportedly will have improved torque and acceleration, so they’ll keep better pace with personal vehicles along the highways and especially on hills. This will reduce traffic backups and make the highways safer overall.
Many municipalities prohibit diesel truck operations at night, including loading and unloading, because of noise. With the quieter electric semi-trucks, those noise restrictions won’t be an issue and trucking transportation will become a more efficient delivery option.
With these more flexible delivery and pickup options, retailers will be able to minimize inventories, to an extent, operating more efficiently to improve profits or allow for price discounts.
Given the massive amounts of energy electric semi-trucks can store, in the event of a disaster with power outages, truckers could band together to create microgrids to power hospitals, communication centers, and other essential services.
The new electric truck designs will have a lower center of gravity, resulting in fewer rollovers. This means improved safety and fewer accident-related road closures.

Clean energy is all around us. It won’t be long until the range for an electric semi-truck is augmented with solar panels arrayed on the trailer and the top of the cab. That energy will also be tapped to maintain refrigerated trailers.

The challenge for the EV industry today is the demand for more range and more and faster-charging stations. But this is no different than what we have today.

Until then, electric semi-trucks will have to remain on shorter, closer-to-home runs and roundtrips, the same dilemma their smaller EV siblings face today.

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Nine Ways Autonomous Transportation will Impact Real Estate

Thomas Frey — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 05:45:57 +0000

Nine Ways Autonomous Transportation will Impact Real Estate

It won’t be long until we see major breakthroughs in the number of autonomous vehicles (AVs) on our roadways – both for on-demand passenger travel as well as for product delivery. AV technology is improving quickly, and it appears that the bigger inhibitor to more widespread use is the uncomfortable, vulnerable feeling of being driven by a pilotless machine.

Fortunately, AV safety evaluations seem to be held to a standard of zero incidents and accidents when the alternative for human-operated vehicles “allows” for thousands of accidents and fatalities due to human error, distraction, impairment, and more. In fact, 94% of serious vehicle crashes are caused by human error.

I haven’t seen the final numbers yet for 2021, but traffic fatalities were on track last year to exceed 40,000 in the U.S., which would be the highest level in many years. We’re moving in the wrong direction on that front.

But yet, when there’s an autonomous vehicle-related accident or even an unfortunate fatality, suddenly AV technology is once again suspect in the eyes of regulators, the media, and the public. Far more often than not, accidents involving AVs are not the vehicle’s fault.

Keep in mind, that air travel is still the safest form of transportation.

Eventually, though, we’ll all become far more confident in these vehicles, just as we did with the airlines, and move past that unreasonable threshold of perfect AV safety in all circumstances. We’ll embrace this opportunity for a significant improvement in road safety overall, and as more AVs fill our roadways, society’s focus on car ownership will shift even further to an AV-enhanced, shared car lifestyle.

When we reach that tipping point in the U.S., there will be far-ranging changes in many areas of our lives, including one area few people have given much thought to – the real estate industry.

Nine Forms of Impact

Here are a few thoughts on how autonomous transportation will impact the residential and commercial real estate industry in the future. Undoubtedly there will be more in the future.

1. Property Values Adjacent to Roads

Currently, residential property values plummet as the location gets closer and closer to major roads and especially interstates. The roar of trucks and gas guzzlers is too much for most people to live with or alongside. But AVs are electric, and electric is quiet. As gas and diesel-powered vehicles dwindle, more people will be fine with living closer to highways. Developers will recognize the opportunity and build far more communities in the current high noise zones adjacent to highways.

2. Garage-less Homes

As people shift to an AV car-sharing lifestyle, they’ll have less need for garages. Some people will turn their garages into spare bedrooms, offices, Airbnb rentals, workshops, or massive storage spaces. New homes won’t be designed around garages, as so many are today – and street views of homes will be all the better for it! In fact, new home footprints will be smaller, and most houses will fit comfortably on smaller plots.

3. Portico Circular Driveways

While we won’t need garages, we will need driveways – most likely a functional circular driveway with the front door at the midpoint under a weather-shielding portico. Home properties will be landscaped in this way so that shared AVs can proceed to the doorway, load and unload passengers, and then continue to the street.

4. Standardized Delivery Boxes

This small but important home feature will accommodate and secure the increasing number of deliveries we receive and the many more that will be delivered soon by AV-delivery vehicles. A number of key retailers will collaborate to develop a standardized delivery box, similar to a mailbox but larger, to accommodate a variety of autonomous delivery service providers so they can securely deposit packages and other items at the home. Existing homes will be retrofitted with this feature, and it will be standard in all new homes. Some new homes may even be designed with a delivery dock or a one-way delivery door into the house.

5. Reduced Emphasis on Proximity

Since automated, shared driving and delivery from point A to point B will involve far less human involvement, home buyers will think less about “Location, Location, Location” and more about “Time, Time, Time.” Consideration about distances to shops and amenities will be overtaken by how we utilize our time along the way. Autonomous vehicles with built-in games and other forms of entertainment will be in huge demand to distract us from the time and distance we’re traveling.

6. Parking Lots will Disappear

Some of the space currently reserved for parking will be used as a staging area for shared AVs. Space devoted to massive surface parking areas and standalone parking garages will be put to better use for parks and new developments. New urban office buildings will need only one level for personal and shared AVs rather than the multi-level parking garages we see today.

7. Car Sales and Maintenance Moves to B2B

Currently, over 10% of retail space is dedicated to the auto industry – from showrooms and brake shops to car washes and gas stations. But as AV fleet ownership consolidates, there will be fewer and fewer customer-facing car businesses. Fleet owners will purchase their autonomous vehicles in bulk, directly from manufacturers and there will be little need for the multitude of new and used car lots we see today. Similarly, auto repair will shift from consumer-focused to in-house maintenance shops by fleet-owning companies. This all means that a lot of valuable land will be available to repurpose for commercial/residential development, entertainment, and recreation.

8. Redesign of Entry-Exit for Public Spaces

Similar to how new home landscaping will accommodate circular driveways, the street-facing layout of public buildings will be designed to resemble a hotel-like, off-street, drive-up/drop-off configuration. Automated systems will manage the flow of AVs coming and going from all high traffic arrival-departure areas.

9. City Expansion

As more people move into cities, cities themself will begin to grow their footprint exponentially, as people pay less and less attention to proximity to goods, culture, and services. Since AVs reduce human involvement and traffic congestion, people will feel liberated to venture further from core city centers to the wide-open spaces of suburbia and beyond.

However, as I mentioned earlier, travel time and how engaged we are along the way, not distance, will be our primary concern when choosing a location. The shared AV option will be affected by the time it takes to free up an AV to travel to the rider’s destination and bring them back again. Since it’s currently more challenging to get a Lyft or Uber ride in the suburbs than in the central city, it will be interesting to see how autonomous vehicles change our urban vs. rural perceptions.

We should remember, too, that shared AVs will not be our only source of transportation. Mass transit AV buses and subways will still be an important element and option. However, these networks will become far less convenient and less cost-differentiated over time and may disappear altogether.

Shared AV-based transportation will be a boon to our cities and society overall. They will not only increase safety but also reduce congestion thanks to improved, sensor-enhanced traffic flow. And maybe just as important, but less obvious, our new lifestyles shaped around convenient shared AV access will allow us to make far better use of valuable land in our cities and suburbs.

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Urban Drone Air Ports: Here’s what to Expect!

Thomas Frey — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 09:00:02 +0000

Urban Drone Air Ports: Here’s what to Expect!

The now-familiar models of commercial drones first came on the scene15 years ago. It wasn’t too long until aeronautical entrepreneurs shifted their sights to scaling the technology to make these vehicles large and powerful enough to transport people over short distances.

Today, we’re quite a bit further along in that area than many people are aware. Prototypes are already flying and China seems to be taking the lead in the field.

And now that the drone passenger technology seems well in hand, futurists and city transportation planners are studying the logistics and implications of localized drone commuter and taxi systems, along with the land-based infrastructure that will support it.

Back to the City

Back in the late 1960s, as passenger jet aircraft were quickly replacing propeller-based commercial fleets across the country, municipalities moved airports outside the city limits so that they could provide adequate room for runways and terminals.

Ten years from now, it’ll be just the opposite, passenger drone systems will spur the development of central city mini airports. Lots of them.

Baby Steps – Drone Commuting and Drone Ports

The first stage of passenger drone commercial transportation will be to provide service between fixed points along specific corridors – such as from a central city hub to a nearby suburb, or between the central city locations of two nearby cities. This will essentially serve as an alternative to automobile or mass transit travel between those two points.

At either end of those flights will be “airports for flying cars” envisioned by Urban-Air Port to support a “highway in the sky” system – in this case, commercial air taxi or “flying car service” between cities in the UK.

If you look closely at the artist’s renderings of their drone airport, it’s reminiscent of a small general aviation terminal. However, in real life, it may look more like the lift lines on a January weekend in Vail!

This back-and-forth commuter transportation model with its terminal facilities provides proof of concept for the subsequent generation of passenger drone commercial service – drone taxis, and all the surface structures that we’ll need to support them.

But before we go into that, let’s take a moment to think through the terminology. Will they be called “mini airports,” “air taxi ports,” or “droneports?” We can do better than “flying car airports,” when we’re referring to these high-volume mass transit systems. In all likelihood, someone like Elon Musk will come up with a name like “giga-ports” and it’ll catch on. But for this column let’s stick with “droneports” to get more familiar with the concept!

Giant Leaps – Drone Taxis and Drone Depots

Compared to drone commuting, there will be no regular routes between endpoints for drone taxis, just travel between a fixed set of departure/destination sites, or what I call “drone depots.” Think of drone depots in terms of today’s auto-based taxi stands. The difference is that drone taxis will only pick up and drop off at one of those depot locations – there will be no stopping at a point in between.

And unlike the commuter drone ports envisioned in the Coventry image, drone depots for taxi service will be less extensive. Since urban land is limited and expensive, they’ll resemble today’s helipads with minimal accompanying building infrastructure – just enough to keep the passengers out of the elements while they wait.

As an aside, large companies will maintain or contract with a fleet of passenger drones, analogous to today’s private company car services. Their drone depots will be in private locations, somewhere on their campuses or on top of their buildings.

In contrast, public drone depots will take over portions of parking lots, for example. They’ll be strategically scattered throughout the city adjacent to light rail stations, office parks, medical centers, and art districts. As demand increases, each location will have more and more pads.

What will our future drone taxi experience be like? Will passengers simply queue up in the “lift line,” enter the next available vehicle, select a destination from the fixed list, pay, sit down, and buckle up? As with today’s surface taxis, drone taxi passengers will indicate if they’re willing to share a drone or not. Pricing will likely vary based on that decision.

With passengers in place, a central navigation operating system will plan the route and
sequence the drone into the airspace, and it will safely and efficiently fly to the requested destination(s). Upon arrival, passengers will exit, and others will board. With no driver fatigue or bio-breaks to account for, a drone could conceivably operate 24/7 except in the worst of weather or for periodic scheduled maintenance. During their limited time on the ground, the drones will take advantage of automated, rapid energy charging.

Will Drone Taxis Replace Ground-Based Taxi Services?

Drone taxi services will grow over time, but the number will still be small. I don’t see how drone taxi services can operate in the same way as automobile taxis do, with pick up and drop off at any conceivable address.

Walmart or Amazon may find a way to do this for home-based package deliveries, but it will be more difficult to fit all those larger drone taxis into our urban skies traveling to tens of thousands of locations in a city. In the distant future’s three-dimensional, Jetson’s-type cities, though, it might be feasible.

What Does This Mean for Flying Cars?

Can we now check “flying cars” off the “finally-here list” of future inventions? Yes, even though drone commuters and drone taxis don’t exactly match everyone’s past vision of an aero car in every driveway.

Drone taxis are quickly morphing into the prototype for personal flying cars, which will certainly need to be self-flying. In reality, we’re still several years away from that, as most people today still struggle with the idea of riding in a self-driving car.

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Robotic Advances: COVID-Spurred and Otherwise

Thomas Frey — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 19:00:39 +0000

Robotic Advances: COVID-Spurred and Otherwise

It’s not surprising that the COVID pandemic has gotten us all thinking about technology that can take the human element out of day-to-day “personal” interactions. There have been some very interesting, new adaptations of existing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, not the least of which is the introduction of robotic baristas and bartenders

There’s even robotic COVID testing. No thanks on that one for me, by the way. It already feels like that swab is going somewhere no human should ever venture. But if robots can be used in heart surgery, I suppose we can trust them with nasal swabs.

Cobots (collaborative robots, designed to perform functions alongside human beings) are supporting the COVID fight in other ways too – like decontaminating healthcare and travel facilities and performing temperature screenings. They’re also taking on more roles on factory floors, allowing for fewer workers in close proximity.

Another fascinating area of AI that’s evolving throughout this period is autonomous (i.e. driverless) transportation and shipping in all of its manifestations – land, rail, air, and sea. As we’ll see below, in some cases these advances can be attributed to COVID-driven applications. In other cases, they’re a continuation of the steady progress that’s been underway for many years.

One if by road

Demand for ride-hailing services plummeted during the pandemic, with Uber and Lyft ridership down between 70% and 80% this past summer. After all, these services still can’t remove the human element of sharing proximity with a driver whose hygiene and health are unknowns. No doubt that was an impetus for Uber’s exploration of autonomous driving through its Advanced Technology Group. But given its dire financial situation, it’s not surprising that Uber reportedly plans to sell that division.

Has COVID in fact spurred the technology related to autonomous road vehicles? It’s hard to make that case. The time horizon, if anything, continues to push further out.

Experts optimistically say we’ll see the earliest commercial use of autonomous trucks in 2021.
Interestingly, autonomous cars seem to be a bit further off, with testing likely to continue for the next couple of years.

Two if by rail

Autonomous rail transportation systems by their nature are much easier to manage since movement is limited to forward and backward along a defined track. It’s no wonder we’ve already seen these autonomous systems in place for many years in small, self-contained areas such as the airport terminal connection “trains.”

Autonomous mass rail transit through cities is not far behind and long-distance rail will follow shortly thereafter.

Have these autonomous rail trendlines been accelerated by COVID? Again, likely not since they don’t ease any COVID spread concerns except for the safety of the driver/conductor who is often well-separated from the subway/metro passengers anyway. And in the case of autonomous long-distance rail transportation, the public, in general, isn’t ready for driverless Amtrak, so all the focus has been on freight transportation, which generally is done with a very small crew on board.

Three if by air

When it comes to air flights, it’s very important to distinguish between self-flying aircraft with pilots on board and autonomous, unmanned aircraft. “Autopilot” has been around for a long time, even as it’s getting more and more sophisticated.

Other breakthroughs in autonomous air traffic, however, have been very apparent recently as we see new COVID-related applications for fixed-wing and rotor drone technology. During the pandemic, drones have been put to use around the world to apply disinfectants in large areas, surveil for distancing compliance, deliver emergency medical supplies, and even detect the virus – albeit from an uncomfortably close range of 10 meters. Retailers are utilizing drones more and more as the last link connecting the supply chain to the consumer as more and more people avoid crowds and order online.

Four if by sea

Similar to air travel, the story is mixed along the same delineation between advances in auto-piloting vs autonomous ship captaining. It’s doubtful we’ll see public acceptance of autonomous passenger ships anytime soon, but there have been tremendous strides bringing us closer to autonomous cargo shipping. Some of the most exciting innovations include:

Shipping companies have been testing a collision-avoidance system by Orca AI to supplement existing radar systems with better proactive warnings and corrective guidance.
A Norwegian chemical company is developing an electric, autonomous container ship for use in a limited region off the coast of that country.
Next year, IBM and ProMare, a non-profit ocean research organization, will send the solar-powered Mayflower Autonomous Ship across the Atlantic with self-contained AI and navigational equipment … and no crew.

How Soon?

We’re all anxious to see autonomous transportation expand beyond the small incremental steps we’re seeing now. It seems like we’ve been hearing that self-driving cars will be commonplace “in a few years” for a few decades now. COVID has pushed what technology we have into new applications. But it has not dramatically driven the development of the underlying technology. Regardless, as autonomous transportation systems improve, they’ll be incorporated into more and more vehicles of all types. Like it or not, autonomous transport and shipping will increase. But they’ll need to be part of a larger, interconnected network of manned, unmanned, automated, and autonomous systems on land, in the air, and on the seas. And the average person will need to embrace the fact that autonomous, AI-driven transportation systems can be safer than those with human drivers and captains.

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By Futurist Thomas Frey, author of 'Epiphany Z – 8 Radical Visions Transforming Your Future'

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On the Shoulders of Giants: Retro art and imagining future transportation

Thomas Frey — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 15:00:04 +0000

On the Shoulders of Giants: Retro art and imagining future transportation

As a futurist, I’ve become enamored with past visionaries and their gift for imagining the future. While some of their retro-futuristic visions may seem poorly conceived or even laughable, each of them had a gift for opening the door of possibilities into the magical world ahead.

One thing I hope we all share, though, is an imagination and a curiosity about the future. Instead of limiting our focus on the present, I trust there’s a little futurist in all of us as we try to visualize the technology advances that future generations will find commonplace.

I really enjoy seeing those online posts where, for example, Millennials try to explain to Gen Z’ers how different life was “when I was your age.” That’s especially true with technology. The 1980s and 1990s versions of video games, computers, recording devices, music media, and so on, seem ancient today – similar to how young people would view a Victrola!

A friend at Budget Direct shared some insights, as a fun way of looking back on what our parents and grandparents considered “futuristic” modes of transportation.

As part of the project, they commissioned drawings of what these vehicles would look like today. (If you’re like me, you were drawing these kinds of cars in the back of your spiral notebook during middle school Algebra class instead of solving for “x”!)

No doubt these 20th Century futurists with a passion for transportation technology and design hoped their dream vehicles would be on the market within their generation. That hasn’t been the case, but if you look at the original and re-created images, I think you’ll see some things that are very familiar.

Let’s have some fun taking a futuristic look at the past!

This proposed “Super-Cycle,” sketched in the 1930s, would reach speeds of 300 m.p.h. according to its now unknown designer. As of today, one motorcycle model reportedly has broken the 300 m.p.h. barrier, but it looks far more like a traditional motorcycle than the Super-Cycle.

If you check out that original design in the link, the Super-Cycle doesn’t look much safer than today’s high-performance bikes, even with its vaunted “headrest over the windshield” feature. The fact that the test driver in the drawing appears to be protected only by a 1930s-era leather football helmet probably adds to that perception. Let’s hope that inside this re-imagined Super-Cycle, there’s a bit more protection!

Gil Spear was a well-regarded car designer for Chrysler, but his design (below) for a 1941 model never came to fruition.

Gil clearly spent most of his time thinking about the front ends of his cars – grill design was his forte. The back end in this sketch almost seems like an afterthought. This two-seat coup certainly conjured up visions of a spaceship on wheels, an image that’s maybe subliminally re-enforced when his car is placed in an airport setting.

This 1961 concept car was designed by Syd Mead for the McLouth Steel Corporation in Detroit, which was dabbling in auto production at the time. You may have heard of Syd in conjunction with his work designing the cycles in TRON movies.

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I like this design because it seems that the car would look just as good (and maybe less bus-like), driving in reverse, bringing to fruition my idea from long ago of having dual direction cars with swivel seats.

Plus, it has kind of a Jetsons’ look to it don’t you think?

The Singoletta (Singlet) was ideated by Sci-Fi author Franco Bandini in the early 1960s. An electric motor, easy parking – the Singoletta seems like a very plausible solution for today’s urban gridlock. This is the 1962 conceptual rendering of the Singoletta from the noted Italian Domenica del Corriere weekly newspaper, now out of print.

As the Journal of Classic Cars article points out, the Singoletta is essentially a canopy over a Segway!

There’s not much protection for the driver that I can tell (lots of glass to boot), but if everyone stays at or below the 40 km/hr estimated top speed (and if it’s used in this kind of congestion), how much harm could there be?

The New Urban Car, designed by Ken Purdy in the 1970s and drawn by Syd Mead, looks really, really familiar.

It’s DeLorean-esque in that the door (a single one) opens up. It’s hinged at the front bumper, a really futuristic look, but not too practical for rainy days.

Last of course, we need to address the hover car issue that’s been a staple of imagination and sci-fi for some time. Some people are eager to jump right from four-wheels on the ground to widespread personal flight vehicles. But for intra-city driving, with no 3-dimensional road systems, I think we need to take it a step at a time and set our sights on hovering for the time being!

Again, working on behalf of the steel industry, Syd Mead put pen to paper to come up with a futuristic Anti-Gravity Car similar to the one here that’s based on his earlier designs.

How close are we to having hover cars on and over the road? Well, we have hoverboards and hover boats. The technology is there. Ford introduced its Levacar prototype in 1959. At this time, Volkswagen and Tesla seem to be in the driver’s seat in developing and marketing hover cars. None of the prototypes I’ve seen, though, come with the very distinctive TIE-Fighter-style side wings in Syd’s visionary plans!

As a final thought, keep in mind, all of the images of the future we’re creating today will look just as dated fifty years from now.

[Acknowledgment: Information for this blog came from the excellent article “Visions of an automotive future that hasn’t come to fruition,” which includes images commissioned by insurance company Budget Direct. All photos in this blog are reproduced from that article, which appeared in the Journal of Classic Cars on August 7, 2020.]

By Futurist Thomas Frey, author of 'Epiphany Z – 8 Radical Visions Transforming Your Future'

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Autonomous Car Privacy – 8 Scenarios to Explain the Enormous Complexity of this Issue

Thomas Frey — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 17:49:36 +0000

Autonomous Car Privacy – 8 Scenarios to Explain the Enormous Complexity of this Issue

When we stop owning our own vehicles, we’ll be forced to adopt whole new mindset!

Over the coming years the conversations about privacy in driverless vehicles will become a delicate balancing act between privacy, security, and convenience.

Let’s consider a typical morning commute in 2030.

After summoning a car, it arrives quickly, recognizes you, and opens the door. “Good morning Mr. Johnson, where are we heading off to today?”

With facial recognition it already knows your most common destinations, and the stops you like to make along the way. But today is different.

“I’d like to pick up Mr. Norbert from Doggy Daycare and take him to my sister’s house in North Willows.” (Mr. Norbert is the cocker spaniel that he hates leaving at home while he’s gone. The sister’s house is already a known destination.)

“Would you like to stop for your regular cup of coffee before going to Doggy Daycare? I see a Tim Hortons along the way, would you like to stop there?”

“Yes, that would be nice.” (In this situation, Tim Hortons was suggested because the company paid extra to get premium placement on the car’s recommendation engine.)

“Would you also like to purchase a doggie mat for the backseat as well?”

“No he’ll be fine sitting on my lap.” (Since the car is already aware of Mr. Norbert’s bladder problems, sensors under the floor mats and seats are given a “monitor closely” alert.)

“Very well, will you be planning any trips this weekend?”

“Perhaps, I was thinking about taking Sally to the Fire House Bistro on Saturday evening.”

“Would you like me to make reservations for you at the Fire House Bistro on Saturday?”

“Yes, that’ll work. Let’s set the arrival time at 6:30 pm.”

“Very well, I’ll contact them now.” Two minutes go by. “The only times available for the Fire House Bistro on Saturday are earlier than 5:30 pm or after 8:00 pm. Would you like me to reserve one of those time-slots?”

“No, see if you can get a 6:30 pm reservation at the Capitol Club? And also, make it a reservation for four because we’d like to take our grandkids Jonathan and Beverly along.”

“Very well, I’ll contact them now.” Two minutes go by. “Good news, I was able to make a 6:30 pm reservation at the Capitol Club on Saturday for a party of four. Will you be needing car seats for your grandchildren?”

“Yes, I’ll need one carseat for Beverly.” (Once again, this request triggers a sensor alert for possible spillage and other messes.)

After stopping to grab a cup of coffee at Tim Hortons, we drive by a grocery store and a list of sale items appear on my screen. With a few taps, he adds them to his grocery list and a delivery service will drop them off this evening.

Just like every morning, my regularly scheduled conference call comes up and he finds himself part of discussion about next generation security systems for the office.

In this age of self-driving cars, an era when much of the minutiae of daily life is relegated to a machine, we can be as busy or as relaxed as we want to be. But overall, they’ll free up people’s time and attention to focus on other matters while they’re moving from one place to the next.

But there can also be a darker side to all this if you’re concerned about privacy. So let’s take a closer look at the privacy side of the equation.

In a driverless vehicle, privacy becomes a delicate balancing act with security and convenience!

Competing Interests

Every trip we make in the future will have multiple parties interested in tracking our activities inside an autonomous vehicle.

Vehicle Owners – The company that owns the cars will want to know about any situation that could possibly compromise the ongoing operation of the vehicle. The list of possible “cleanup & repair” triggers will get more complicated over time:

Spillage and trash
Contagious diseases
Known criminals
Handicap people
Illegal activities
Terrorist activities

Governments – Since autonomous vehicles will be classified as “public transportation,” governments have an obligation to provide safe and efficient transportation while mitigating danger, and stopping harmful activities before they happen:

Known criminals
Handicap people
Illegal activities
Hackers
Hijackers
Terrorist activities

Passengers – Anyone riding in an autonomous car will want a safe and inexpensive form of transportation:

Convenient
Safe and secure
Reliable
Comfortable
Easy to enter & exit

Advertisers – Having access to a captive audience is worth its weight in gold, however, it’s a delicate balance between being too intrusive and not enough. Contrary to what most people think, advertisers are not interested in spamming the world with ads. Rather, most are interested in specifically targeting only those people who will be interested in their products or services.

Loyalty Programs – Passenger rewards for being a frequent traveler will become a hot topic in the future. For this reason, having an automated system for logging trips and calculating mileage will become a critical feature.

AI Operating System Companies – The heart and soul of every autonomous vehicle operation will be an AI operating system that becomes increasingly anticipatory over time. Having the right cars in the right parts of the city at the right time will prove to be the first benchmark for performance. Beyond that, every AI operating system will get to know their passengers quite intimately, offering movies, games, music, recommending products, goods, and services, making accommodations for changes in jobs, lifestyles, and even working with quirky new passenger demands.

With driverless technology, our expectations will dramatically change!

Eight Scenarios

Surveillance inside a vehicle will take many forms – visual surveillance with cameras, audio surveillance through microphones, GPS, sensors, air quality monitors, and much more.

As fleet owners offer customers a smooth, clean, comfortable ride from point A to point B, there are a staggering number of things that can go wrong along the way.

Whenever serious problems are detected, vehicles will be taken out of service until the problem has been resolved. However, any time a vehicle is removed from operation – either for cleanup, repair, spills, contagions, police activity, or any number of situations – expenses start mounting.

At the same time companies want to monitor what’s happening inside their cars, customers have many reasons why they don’t want anyone watching them.

Here are a few quick scenarios to highlight the size and scope of issues these companies will be dealing with.

1. Terrorist Scenarios

Autonomous vehicle companies will quickly become targets for hackers, hijackers, and any number of devious minded schemers. All parties involved – governments, passengers, and vehicle owners – will want to minimize these kinds of problems. When it comes to terrorist scenarios, problems will range from bombs, to poison, toxic cars, infectious diseases, spying on conversations, and more.

2. Divorce Scenarios

Many of those going through a divorce tend to have heightened levels of paranoia. With many worried that their qualifications and worthiness of being a parent will be called into question, many recently divorced people will want to travel incognito with their messy, unruly kids, dogs, and toys.

3. Celebrity Scenarios

At a certain point, fame becomes the arch enemy of being seen in public, and many will worry about word getting out at the driverless command center about their whereabouts. Paparazzi, stalkers, and even autograph junkies become a problem for those who just want a peaceful trip across town. These types of problems are quickly exacerbated when viral media stars and rapidly unfolding news stories focus a huge spotlight on anything they do.

4. Business Exec on Phone Scenarios

Many business executives routinely have phone conversations that, if overheard by those in competing businesses, could jeopardize the long-term competitiveness of their own company. Corporate espionage is alive and well, and operating at far more sophisticated levels than ever before.

5. Pets and Support Animal Scenarios

As the number of people living with pets continues to climb, pet owners increasingly expect their pets will be as welcome as they are wherever they go. With pets ranging from potbelly pigs, to chickens, dogs, cats, snakes, rats, miniature horses, parrots, and iguanas, the overall messiness of animals enclosed in tiny mobile spaces becomes a significant issue. Fleet operators will insist on specific “rider insurance policies” that will kick in whenever an animal is onboard.

6. Contagious Disease Scenarios

No one wants to contract a virus, infections, lice, allergens, or any other kind of transmittable illness inside a driverless vehicle. For this reason, fleet owners will have air quality monitors that continuously sniff and test air particles for anything remotely dangerous.

7. Messy Kid Scenarios

Even though you may love kids, few passengers want to climb into a car where an explosive diaper has been changed, a 32 ounce Big Gulp has been spilled, projectile vomiting is coating the seat-backs, or magic markers have turned the interior into a Picasso-wanna-be.

8. Wealthy People Scenarios

While rich people are willing to pay for absolute privacy, where all cameras, sensors, and recording devices are turned off, things will still go wrong, and fleet owners (and police) will want to know who is responsible. What if passengers get into a fight, blood everywhere, someone dies, or is thrown from the vehicle, how are these issues resolved?

The more personalized driverless vehicles get, the more conveniences they’ll offer!

Final Thoughts

When it comes to self-driving cars, the price of convenience is surveillance.

Massive amounts of data will be collected, as a natural extension of a driverless car’s functionality. These cars will rely on high-tech cameras, both internal and external, along with ultra-precise GPS data. This means cars will collect reams of information about the people they transport around, similar to the data Uber has amassed about its customers’ habits, but down to a level of detail that’s far more granular.

For self-driving cars to work, an enormous amount of data has to flow through their onboard sensor networks to be able to keep track of every car, person, or animal on the road.

The more personalized these vehicles get, and the more conveniences they offer, the more data they’ll have to incorporate into their operation. The future I described might be a few years away, but there’s no reason to believe it’s too far-fetched.

That said, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

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By Futurist Thomas Frey, author of 'Epiphany Z – 8 Radical Visions Transforming Your Future'

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Future of Transportation Archives - Futurist Speaker

The Airship That Watches Everything — and Never Has to Land

What Sceye Actually Is

Where the Biggest Opportunities Are

The Dangers Worth Understanding

When Will Average People Experience This?

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High-Altitude Platform Systems and the Future of Global Connectivity

The Methane Hunters: How New Technology Is Finding Invisible Emissions

The Surveillance Problem at the Edge of Space

The Great Transportation Shakeout: When Cars, Drones, and Airlines Collide

The Assumption Nobody Questions

The Three-Hour Tipping Point

The Drone Disruption

The Overnight Autonomous Revolution

Who Wins in Each Distance Category

The Timeline of Disruption

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Why Airlines Can’t Compete on Convenience

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Arrival

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Bridging the Darién Gap, the Final Piece of the Pan-American Highway

Bridging the Darién Gap, the Final Piece of the Pan-American Highway

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The Extraordinary Economic Benefits of the Tesla Semi

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Nine Ways Autonomous Transportation will Impact Real Estate

Nine Ways Autonomous Transportation will Impact Real Estate

Nine Forms of Impact

1. Property Values Adjacent to Roads

2. Garage-less Homes

3. Portico Circular Driveways

4. Standardized Delivery Boxes

5. Reduced Emphasis on Proximity

6. Parking Lots will Disappear

7. Car Sales and Maintenance Moves to B2B

8. Redesign of Entry-Exit for Public Spaces

9. City Expansion

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Urban Drone Air Ports: Here’s what to Expect!

Urban Drone Air Ports: Here’s what to Expect!

Back to the City

Baby Steps – Drone Commuting and Drone Ports

Giant Leaps – Drone Taxis and Drone Depots

Will Drone Taxis Replace Ground-Based Taxi Services?

What Does This Mean for Flying Cars?

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