I have just been reading the latest edition of a car magazine that was showcasing a brand new Bentley that costs £1.6 million and a brand new Mercedes AMG for the bargain price of £2.3 million.
I must admit that even if I won a £100+ lottery jackpot I would not find it in myself to spend millions of pounds on a new car, but that is probably also down to not being brought up by multi-millionaire parents.
The magazine has now moved on from listing the new petrol and diesel cars that are for sale and their jovial comments about certain brands or models.
As the move towards electric cars takes place they have now replaced this with a section that covers what new electric cars you can buy telling you ranges, some jovial comments and more importantly the prices.
Whilst there is a push for moving to electric cars it’s not until you see the prices that you can understand why there are not more on the road. Low ranges and lack of charging are also factors BUT price must be a big one.
Take the Fiat 500 for example. You can pick up a brand new base petrol model for around £15k. A base electric model starts at around £25k with a larger battery model over £30k.
Or a Mini. You can pick up a base petrol model for around £21k with a base electric model starting at just over £30k.
Most family models with a decent range are around the eye watering figure of £40K.
A few years ago people would have laughed at you for spending £50k on a Kia or Hyundai but that is what their attractive looking electric cars are selling for.
You used to be able to get a top of the range car or top brand new non electric car for that region or some pretty tasty nearly near new cars for that price as well.
So how does this relate to driverless cars.
The first record of an electric vehicle is found way back in the 1830’s when a Scottish man Robert Anderson is said to have built the first electric vehicle. At the same time an American named Thomas Davenport was also credited for the same.
So although the electronic technology has been around for years it has only recently taken off with the push for it to be the de facto car engine choice.
As such car industry is still undertaking lots of development both in battery technology and the introduction of new models and adaption of existing models.
This all takes not only time but a lot of financial investment and need to be paid for somewhere which is possibly a good reason why electric cars are so expensive currently. I would expect at some point that with the advent of cheaper/longer range batteries that prices will drop allowing the market to lift off further.
The same could be said for driverless cars
The concept of an autonomous car dates back to the Futurama exhibit at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. General Motors created an exhibit to display its future vision of the world and this included an automated highway system that would guide self-driving cars.
In this exhibit, Norman Bel Geddes created the first self-driving car, which was an electric vehicle guided by radio-controlled electromagnetic fields generated with magnetized metal spikes embedded in the roadway
So although driverless cars visions have been around for years it has only recently that they have taken off and are now being built and tested in view of a future roll out to the public.
As such the car industry is still undertaking lots of development in driverless car technology with a view to the introduction of new models and adaption of existing models. The development is still a little way behind the electric car boom but not that far.
Like the electric car development path driverless car developments also take not only time but a lot of financial investment and will need to be paid for somewhere. As such if you are expecting to jump into the back of a driverless car straight after launch then I would suspect it will, like the electric cars, be an expensive proposition to the early guinea pig adopters.
As such you may have to wait for the early adopters to have ironed out the issues for you leading to reduction in development/production costs before the average person will have a driverless car on their drive. I suspect the wait will be worth it though!.
Driverless Cars will never take off 