Driverless Buses: The Specific Medium Trip Proposition: Luxury and Space

October 18, 2017October 18, 2017 / futuristpaul (Paul Higgins) / Leave a comment

In a previous post, I have explored the problems with short haul bus travel once driverless electric cars are a car ride service. There is a possibility that there may be a sweet spot between long-haul bus and short haul bus services. Bus companies can save significant costs by using driverless electric vehicles. If they use those savings to pamper passengers instead of cutting costs, they may well win the medium haul travel war.

The change of buses to driverless electric buses will make them more competitive with air travel. This is especially true over distances up to the 300-km mark. Most flights in Australia are longer than that, but there are plenty of short-haul flights in other countries. Once the distances get too long the faster speed of planes starts to take a competitive toll. Bus companies might be able to offer a significantly lower price to catch a driverless electric bus from Melbourne to Adelaide (727 km). The problem is that the flight is 1 hour and 20 minutes and the bus trip is around 10 hours depending on traffic. Even allowing for the delays of getting to the airport and moving through through security we are probably talking 3.5 hours versus 11 hours. Only people who cannot afford the fare are going to be taking that bus. Especially when you can get tickets that are sometimes close to competitive with the bus fare if you travel at the right times.

As an example of the medium length trip, let’s take the Sydney to Canberra flight which is 283 km. The flight time is 55 min, and a discount airfare is about $151 plus $25 for a taxi at the other end. Flights to Canberra are often more expensive than most other major city flights in Australia. This is due to the significant demand for flights during the weeks that the Federal Parliament sits. Between the Parliamentary sitting weeks, there are a limited number of flights. According to Greyhound Buses, the bus travel time is 3 hours and 30 minutes to 4 hours.

The reality is that while the flight time is 55 minutes the real travel time is by air is closer to 3 hours. You must be at the gate 30 minutes before the flight leaves. Airport traffic congestion means leaving the CBD at least an hour before that to avoid the risk of missing your flight. At the other end, you need 20 minutes to get a taxi and get to the CBD. Of course, there is some extra time for the bus as well, but it is minimal. So, let’s say it is 3 hours for the flight versus 4.5 hours for the bus. The current saver fare for Greyhound is A$38. If we use our previous assumptions on cost reductions for driverless electric buses (see The Coming Bus Apocalypse) we could get the price down to $23.

You might not be able to attract many more passengers by that cost reduction when the airfare plus taxi is already five times the current bus cost. That is a fair argument. What you can do though is take that price reduction and put it into more comfort and services. This produces a fantastic value proposition when the airlines are just trying to cram in more people. Imagine efficient workstations, Gold Class cinema type recliner chairs, and even nap pods for customers. What about soundproof gaming rooms so your children can game while you relax and take in a movie. Two adults and two kids for $152 for a luxury bus trip versus $625 on the plane sounds like a killer value proposition. The price might remain the same but comfort and experience are much better because the bus company can offer the same price but 60 or 70% more space.
Smaller buses with much better space than planes can come and pick you up from your house or business and take you in luxury. Eliminating the driver from a smaller bus has a much more significant impact per passenger than removing a driver from a larger bus.

Most of the current airline and bus transport models use the principle of maximising capacity utilisation. Most of the costs of driving a bus or flying a plane are fixed costs. Every extra passenger contributes an enormous percentage of their ticket price to the bottom line. Electric driverless buses are likely to head in the opposite direction for journeys where bus trips take not much time than flights.

It is a matter of changing the model where costs per passenger kilometre drive all thinking.

This will have significant implications for bus companies, and bus manufacturers. Bus companies will have to rethink routes and bus configurations. They will also have to rethink customer service. Bus manufacturers will have to rethink bus size, bus interiors, and bus power systems.

Paul Higgins

I am writing a book on autonomous vehicles with Dr Chris Rice . It is called Rise of the Autobots: How Driverless Vehicles will Transform our Economies and our Communities. Follow us here to see more excerpts as we write.

Come visit our website to see more of my work.

Driverless Electric Cars as a Service – One Adoption Scenario

October 5, 2017October 5, 2017 / futuristpaul (Paul Higgins) / 1 Comment

Self-driving Uber vehicles are lined up to take journalists on rides during a media preview at the company’s Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh earlier this month.

As I ponder the changes that driverless cars will cause across our societies, one of the difficulties is trying to understand what the speed of adoption might be. That is because speed of adoption has huge consequences on the levels of disruption that will occur. The speed of adoption linked into all sorts of factors including:

Production bottlenecks in the supply chain such as raw materials, and battery supply.
Production capacity for manufacturing of electric driverless cars.
Technical issues in achieving true Level 5 automation (think no steering wheel).
Political and legal issues around liability and insurance.
The balance between the numbers of cars in personal ownership, and the number owned by big companies providing transport services (think Uber/Lyft/Didi and new entrants like Waymo).

In turn these factors will be affected by the business models and strategic thinking of the major players. This includes car manufacturers, car ride companies, and governments.

The competition is going to be brutal. Existing car companies will be going up against each other, and new competitors. The new competitors include car ride sharing companies, and new car manufacturers.

Some of the major problems in implementing driverless electric cars as a transport service can be largely solved by car ride companies. The problems include the following:

The Initial Scale/Network Problem

The problem if you want to offer transport as service is you have to get to scale before customers will even contemplate using your service. You cannot put 100 cars on the road and say here I am. This is like the network problem of the first fax machine but on a much larger scale. Who buys the first fax machine? You might buy half a dozen of them so you can communicate between distant offices of the same company. The real value comes when it is a standard system adopted by many people. The problem with transport as a service is that it is much larger. The reality is that people will not use your service until they can consistently get a car in a reasonable time frame to take them wherever they want to go. That needs massive scale and is the reason why Uber was so aggressive in recruiting drivers in target cities. They needed a critical mass to drive customer demand.

A new entrant with electric driverless cars can provide this service but they will need a lot of cars. If you need 100,000 vehicles at peak time in Melbourne (where I live) to supply that service it requires a lot of capital. If the cars cost $50,000 each it is going to cost you $5 billion just for the cars. That is apart from the costs of the platform to run the system, plus the initial trading losses that will be incurred before breaking even. Not many organisations will have that sort of money, and that might just be for one city. Waymo or Apple might be an exception given the masses of cash that they have. The existing car ride companies got around this problem by using other people’s cars. Difficult to do that for driverless cars although we will explore a model for that in a later post.

The existing car ride companies (Didi, Lyft, Uber, etc) are already at the scale needed to supply the services for their existing customer base. Adding driverless electric cars into that service is somewhat analogous to the electricity grid. Once the standard utility service is in place (think poles, wires, plugs and standards for electricity, and roads and traffic systems for cars) you can make additions as long as they fit the system. You can add a new coal generating plant, or a new gas plant, or new solar capacity and power comes out at the socket. My desk lamp does not care how the power was generated. In the case of a car ride service as long as the customers accept a driverless car you can put that into your system alongside your existing fleet. You may need to drive (sic) demand by offering discounts for the driverless vehicle to get people past their first stages of discomfort. In my case the safety factor is likely to be the key initial driver for change but I am an outlier.

The Capital Problem

If you are a company that wants to supply transport as a service you will want to scale as fast as you can. Ideally you will offer a service in 50 cities in the first 3 – 5 years. If we assume that takes 100,000 vehicles in each city and each car costs $50,000 you now have a cost of $250 billion. If you add in technology platform costs , and initial losses you might have to find $350 billion. That is a lot of coin in anyone’s language. Even if the required vehicle numbers are much lower it is still going to be a massive capital investment.

Even if you don’t move that fast you will have to make large bets in the target cities where you first invest.

If you are a car ride company you can scale by steadily adding cars to your existing services in all those cities. That should have the effect of reducing your costs, and improving your bottom line at a much slower capital burn rate. You can also play a much more agile strategic game. If you perceive a threat in a particular market you can scale faster in that market and slower in other markets. If adoption rates are faster in one city you can rapidly scale up volume in that city by slowing each of your other markets just a little.

The Technical Problem

The technical problem is getting to level 5 automation as soon as possible. Level 5 automation is when there is no driver required in any location or conditions. Any driverless car company will have to convince the regulatory authorities of safety at level 5. The existing ride companies have an advantage here. They already have masses of data on the travel their existing cars undertake. They can also start with say 100 driverless vehicles within their existing service. That will consist of testing them in real conditions with paid drivers in the vehicles. While a lot of advances in driverless car systems are being made using computer simulations nothing fully substitutes for real world data. Especially for politicians and for regulatory authorities. That real world data can then be fed back into simulation systems to gain an advantage in simulation programs

Existing car ride companies are the most likely path to adoption of driverless electric cars. These types of cars provide significant reductions in the cost structures for car ride services. This means that if they sit on their hands someone will come along and blow their existing services out of the water. The car ride companies have the competitive imperative to go down this path. They also have some significant competitive advantages in executing the strategy. That does not mean they will be successful, just that they have a head start.

In our next post we will take a closer look at some of the players, and the tactics that might be involved.

I am writing a book on autonomous vehicles with Dr Chris Rice from Texas. It is called Rise of the Autobots: How Driverless Vehicles will Transform our Economies and our Communities. Stay tuned for more excerpts as we finalise the book.

Note: Featured image is from NPR

Electric Cars – Saving Real Money or Arbitrage Opportunity?

September 21, 2017September 21, 2017 / futuristpaul (Paul Higgins) / 1 Comment

Electrek has reported an amazing set of numbers on a Tesla S:

A Tesla Model S hits 300,000 miles in just 2 years – saving an estimated $60,000 on fuel and maintenance

The vehicle is owned by Tesloop, a company that offers rides in Tesla vehicles.

A large part of this difference is due to the fact that the car is being used within an area that has extensive Tesla SuperChargers. So all the electricity is “free” (paid for as part of the purchase price of the vehicle). Also parts of the repairs and maintenance were largely paid for under the warranty. The powertrain warranty is for 8 years and includes unlimited mileage. This means that at the same annual usage rate the warranty would cover 1.2 million miles or 1.93 million kilometres.

The key question here is whether Tesla is losing money on this arrangement. If so, the savings are artificially inflated. The answer to part of that question is in the pricing models that Tesla introduced early in 2017. Before that date all Tesla S vehicles received free power on the Tesla Supercharger Network. After that date only the first 400 kWh per year are free. After that you get charged a fee for your power when charging . The fee varies between locations.

So there is no doubt that Tesla has been heavily subsiding the Tesloop operating costs. A smart business move to spot an arbitrage opportunity.

The 400 kWh is estimated to provide power for 1000 miles of driving (1609 kilometres). In Australia the current (sic) charge on the Tesla Supercharger is A$0.35/kWh.(https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/support/supercharging). so the energy cost per kilometre of driving is approximately 8.7 cents. This compares to my petrol Toyota Corolla Hatch at 8.1 cents per kilometre (combined urban/extra urban mileage claim of 6.7L/100km and fuel at 121 cents per litre). Fuel efficiency is worse in urban driving but the Tesla Superchargers are mainly for highway travel so that this is a fair comparison.

Two other comparisons bear looking at. In Illinois the charging rate is US$0.15 per kWh. This equals A$0.188 (RBA quoted exchange rate August 30th 2017) and changes the per kilometre cost to 4.7 cents. Secondly, our current at home shoulder and off peak rates are A$0.1257, which reduces the per kilometre cost to 3.12 cents. Of course we would have to pay for a charging unit as well. If we amortise that cost then the total cost might be 4 cents per km. That is half my current fuel costs, or a saving of about $600 a year on 15,000 km.

If we use 4 cents as a reasonable figure then the cost difference for an electric vehicle travelling 100,000 km a year as a car ride service/taxi is $4,000. That is a significant advantage for an electric share vehicle over a fossil fuel vehicle. That number starts to really add up if you own 20,000 of them in a fleet ($80 million a year).

If we go to the non- fuel car costs. RACQ estimates that the private ownership costs of running a medium sized car in Australia are around 65-72 cents per kilometre. More than 50% of these costs are interest costs (about 8.2 cents) and depreciation costs (about 29.5 cents). Registration and insurance and other on road costs are at about 14.9 cents. This leaves about 7.5 cents for repairs and maintenance plus tyres after accounting for fuel costs. The vast majority of that being repairs and maintenance (median is about 7 cents). In the Tesloop case the scheduled repairs and maintenance costs were US$6,900 for 300,000 miles (482,802 km). This equates to A1.79 cents per kilometre. If we go back to my Toyota which has a fixed price service of A$480 a year then that costs is A3.2 cents per kilometre at 15,000 km per year. The reality is that I drive a little less so the cost is 3.7 cents.

If we go back to the RACQ numbers the Tesla Model S 75 version has fuel costs of 4.73 cents per kilometre. It also has maintenance costs of A8.91 cents. This seems high given the Tesla Loop experience but may just be a function of the much higher mileage.

The Tesla S is a luxury vehicle and so its costs are likely to be higher than a standard vehicle. Lets look at the Chevy Bolt. In this analysis I have been helped by an excellent article by Steven Sinofsky at Learning by Shipping and Insideevs : Chevrolet Bolt Requires Almost No Maintenance For First 150,000 Miles.

The maintenance schedule (H/T Steven Sinofsky) for the Bolt is:

Insideevs estimates that if you do the very scant maintenance yourself the cost for maintenance for the first 150,000 miles (241,000 km) is US$150 (yes you read that right) while Steven says:

“Yep you read that correctly, during my entire three year lease there’s nothing for me to do. I never have to go to the dealer” – Steven Sinofsky

So one way or another routine maintenance is very low.

In terms of fuel efficiency the Bolt is rated at 238 miles (383 km) on a 60 kWh battery although city driving has a better range due to regenerative braking, and highway driving is poorer due to a poor drag coefficient. This results in 6.38 km per kWh and if we use the off peak rate I pay then that is A1.97 cents per kilometre (note Steven was more conservative in his mileage calculations which work out to about A2.39 cents per km using my electricity costs).

This is a lot of figures so as a summary I have made up a small table:

	Fuel Costs	Maintenance Costs	Total

Tesloop Tesla S	0	1.79	1.79

Toyota Corolla Hatch (Mine)	8.1	3.7	11.8

Tesla S (RACQ)	4.7	8.91	13.61

Luxury Vehicle (Ave RACQ)	7.06	10.2	17.26

Chevy Bolt (first 60,000km – but generally representative)	1.97	0	1.97

Now I know that I have not made a fair comparison between the Bolt and the Tesla S. In part because they are completely different vehicles, and because I have only included routine maintenance servicing for the Bolt. There will be non -routine costs in the maintenance costs. The actual costs of those the owner will be in part determined by warranty systems. The RACQ figures appear to include a capped servicing arrangement with Telstra.

What we can say is that there are significant operating costs for the new electric vehicles, as compared to standard ICE vehicles. Even if we add in the Tesloop Tesla S maintenance costs as an estimate for the Bolt’s costs, the Chevy Bolt’s operating cost for fuel and maintenance is still only 3.76 cents per kilometre, compared to my Toyota costs of 11.8 cents. Even though I have only included my fixed costs servicing which is well below the costs shown in the RACQ figures.

That comparison is also unfair as the costs associated with the Tesla S are high due to its luxury model status. You can see the details of the repairs and maintenance receipts by going to : Tesla Model S Hits 300,000 Miles with less than $11,000 maintenance costs and registering for their Google Docs page. These include warranty repairs done at no cost. I was unable to reconcile the costs to the article description as some costs appear to be missing but what is in there is in the following table:

Date	Item	Cost

18/08/2016	Replace 12V battery	171.33

24/10/2016	replace brake pads and rotors	1759.42

4/11/2016	Right Rear Door handle	961.96

21/11/2016	left front door handle	962.18

20/02/2017	wheel liner, rear diffuser, front aero shield, water ingress on headlights	2176.2

7/03/2017	Air conditioner , other pages to receipt are missing	2800.12

15/03/2017	Air conditioner, passenger door handle	656.64


	Total	9487.85

As you can see the majority of the maintenance costs excluding the issue with the headlights and brake replacements related to the air conditioner and door handles. Some of these are likely to be costs associated with the luxury/technology parts of the doors, and early model issues. I would expect that costs for a standard production model would be much lower.

The point of all this analysis is work for our book to look at adoption timelines and business models for electric and autonomous vehicles.

In this case it is the headline number of how much it takes to run your car. That is because people get this in their face every week whereas the main costs of finance and depreciation are more removed from their experience. Once we move to the full question of costs we have to look at those more closely. we will do that in the next few days. Then we have to look at fleet options versus personal ownership.

We will do some more sophisticated modelling as we firm up the assessment for the book.

I am writing a book on autonomous vehicles with Dr Chris Rice of the University of Texas Austin. It is called Rise of the Autobots: How Driverless Vehicles will Transform our Economies and our Communities. Stay tuned for more excerpts as we finalise the book.

An Initial Model for Autonomous Trucks in Australia?

August 30, 2017September 20, 2017 / futuristpaul (Paul Higgins) / Leave a comment

Updated with long distance vehicle announcements

A recent announcement in the United Kingdom has the government allocating 8.1 million pounds to a truck platooning trial:

Semi-automated truck convoys get green light for UK trials

Platooning is essentially like bicycle pelotons in road races like the Tour de France, where riders get sucked along in the slipstream. Until you have actually participated in one, you do not realise how much easier it is to ride in the group. I knew that intellectually, but the experience is something else. For trucks this means less congestion and less fuel use. In order to achieve these results the artificial intelligence and sensing systems that controls the trucks have to be much better than human drivers so that the trucks can drive closer together. In the UK trial the speeds and steering will be controlled by the lead vehicle.

Total autonomy for vehicles on the road is known in the industry as Level 5 autonomy. This is where vehicles can control themselves in all road conditions. We are a long away from this technologically, so the trucks in the trials will have human drivers who can take the wheel at any time. The problem with this is that driver attention will naturally wane and this may impact on reaction time. In this trial this may be dealt with by periodic blocks of time where the human driver must take command of the truck – whether there is a need or not.

The medium term adoption pathway here in Australia may be different due to the road conditions and distances travelled. Here in Australia the situation for truck driving is a little different than the UK. There are much larger travel distances between the major cities, and the major inter-capital highways are less crowded. This is mirrored in the United States, especially in larger states such as Texas and California. This means that the adoption process of the technology may be significantly different.

There are a couple of technology issues in the adoption pathway that is chosen that flow into these sorts of differences and how we might choose to adopt the technologies.

Firstly there is a significant debate in the autonomous vehicle technology world about the approach of using maps versus continuous sensing. As humans we can navigate an unfamiliar terrain because our sensing and vision systems are good enough to recognise and continually process information at a level that is useful. The technology in autonomous vehicles is still not good enough to achieve that yet, and this is where mapping comes in. If an autonomous vehicle has stored in its system a map of the territory it is about to navigate, it only has to compare the environment it is encountering versus the map. This significantly reduces the job that needs to be done, reducing the pressure on the technology. In the long run it is likely that onboard vision and sense making systems will be good enough to do without maps. In the short term having maps significantly improves performance. The timing of these changes, and the implications for strategic competitive advantage are critical when thinking about strategic decisions for individual companies, and what the overall outcomes might look like (see: Winner-takes all effects in autonomous cars for an excellent discussion on this).

Secondly, at what point will we be comfortable with no driver in the vehicle, and will this be at Level 4 or Level 5 autonomy. At Level 4 autonomy the vehicle can drive itself but is limited either by geography or conditions. This means that while the driver can be removed there needs to be some sort of geofencing, or emergency failsafe systems. For example trucks on the highway may automatically pull over if rain levels go beyond a certain level, affecting visibility. If adoption pathways can be achieved at level 4 rather than level 5 then adoption will occur more rapidly as the technology will not have to be as advanced to achieve the outcome.

So if we can build a model in a specific area of trucking where there are less complicated driving challenges, and mapping makes a significant contribution we can create faster adoption. Which takes us back to the highways between capital cities in Australia.

In Australia 18-19% of total road freight movements are inter-capital freight movements (Truck Industry Fleet Report 2015), and there has been significant improvement in those roads over the last 20 years. For example once we get outside of the major urban areas of Melbourne and Sydney the road between the two cities is excellent for trucks. An early adoption model for autonomous truck movements in Australia might start with transfers between Melbourne and Sydney and look like the following:

Autonomous trucks operating the full distance between the two cities except for the last 30 kilometres (plus or minus) in each city.
A truck changeover system on the outskirts of both cities where either the truck takes on a driver, or the prime mover is changed over to a non autonomous prime mover and driver. This is necessary in an early adoption model because the challenges of driving in the major cities are significantly higher than on the open highway.
A cooperative mapping effort coordinated by the Federal Government where the road is mapped in its entirety.
The formal mapping is supplemented by all autonomous trucks contributing their mapping and sensing data to a central system to continually update the maps. Therefore any new hazards or changes such as roadworks are rapidly incorporated into the maps that all autonomous trucks use.
Autonomous truck support centres where the control of the truck can be taken over by a remote driver in the case of difficulties such as problems with sensors, or road conditions which are outside of specified parameters.

Many of the pieces of such an implementation pathway are already in place or soon will be. Autonomous trucks have been trialled in several locations around the world, and we already have remote control of mining systems (Mining industry looks towards a new wave of automation , Rio Tinto: rolling out the world’s first fully driverless mines ). We also have remote control of drones for military operations.

Around the world the trucking industry is seeing problems with an ageing workforce, with trucking jobs being seen as unattractive by younger generations (Wheels not in motion: Australia running short of truckies). A system as described above can solve some of this problem by:

Autonomous trucks can operate for more hours than human drivers can, increasing efficiency of truck use and reducing overall demand for drivers.
Increasing the attractiveness of trucking jobs. In many cases the long hours and time away from home are significant factors reducing the attractiveness of driving a truck. If the long distances can be handled by autonomous trucks, and the drivers can go home to their families at night then the job becomes more attractive.
A truck driving job is more interesting, as the easy parts are taken over by autonomous trucks, and the more difficult driving conditions, unloading operations, and interactions with customers are covered by human drivers in short haul operations.

Eventually most trucking operations will be carried out by autonomous trucks If we want to address the shortage of current workers, reduce fuel consumption for long haul freight, and possibly reduce fatigue related accidents, a model which accelerates early adoption should be trialled.

Update

Proterra has announced an 1100 mile (1772.2km) trip of its Catalyst Bus on a single charge. (Proterra Counters Tesla’s ‘Beast’ Of A Semi With 1,100-Mile Range Electric Bus). In addition Tesla will announce its new Semi truck in October. With distances between Melbourne and Sydney of approximately 865 km, Sydney to Brisbane of 928 km, and Melbourne to Adelaide of 725 km this seems to put the intercapital freight market in the sights of autonomous electric trucks.

Note: The featured image comes from: http://qz.com/656104/a-fleet-of-trucks-just-drove-themselves-across-europe/

Sell Your Crash Repair Business Now*

August 14, 2017August 14, 2017 / futuristpaul (Paul Higgins) / Leave a comment

*this should not be taken as financial or business advice. If you own a crash repair business please take professional advice before making any decisions.

I am just going through the process of getting some minor damage repaired on our car and have been ruminating on the future of the insurance and repair model when we have driverless (autonomous) cars. This was also prompted by a couple of stories in The Age here in Melbourne:

Crash repair: How Ray Malone became head of ASX-listed company AMA Group

and

Driverless vehicles technology to roll out on the Tulla under trial

The first story describes how Ray Malone has built a Australia’s largest crash repair business, and is aiming to grow it even further. That would seem to go against the title of this post but it actually feeds into my thinking because Ray’s company provides wholesale service aftercare which will be vital in the scenario I am describing.

The second story is about how trials of driverless cars are starting here in Melbourne. This follows a large number of trials that are being conducted in various countries around the world.

Once we move to a reasonably widespread adoption of autonomous/driverless cars the local crash repair business will basically disappear except for a few large operators like Ray Malone but even his business could be under threat . The key reasons for this are:

1/ It has been forecast that autonomous cars will significantly reduce the number of car accidents that occur. This is based largely on the statistics that human error causes more than 90% of traffic crashes. So if we can eliminate the crashes caused by idiots, people under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and people driving tired or angry (Police looked into the deaths of 86 people on Victorian roads last year and found that in more than 10 per cent of cases the driver had experienced a traumatic or upsetting event.) we can significantly reduce the number of accidents.

Against this argument is that autonomous cars supplying a transport service may result in people travelling further and perhaps take more risks. Certainly it will allow elderly people who cannot drive, and young people who do not have a licence to travel in cars more than they otherwise would. There have also been arguments that because we feel safer we may take more risks as pedestrians or cyclists. If we are conservative and say that only 50% of accidents caused by human behaviour will be eliminated we still have a significant fall in accidents.

2/ It is highly likely that we will see large fleet models emerge where large numbers of people choose not to own a vehicle. If the overall travel costs are lower than owning your own vehicle, and you can get a vehicle anytime you need one then the convenience of transport as a service outweighs the personal ownership model. The economics for fleet owners are different than for individual owners when it comes to crash repair services. Fleet owners will want large scale service operations to reduce costs or will pay far less for the services of smaller scale operators. This feeds into a large supplier (such as Ray Malone’s company) snapping up more business. Larger scale crash repair businesses will benefit from the economies of scale that allow them to use new technologies such as robotics to increase throughput and reduce costs.

3/ The model for crash repair business location will change. Currently crash repair businesses are located in scattered locations throughout the suburbs and inner city. This is because if I want to take my car in for crash repairs there is a significant time cost for me to take my car to a location that is not near to my house or business. I have to travel to the crash repair business, and then get back to my home or place of work. So I want the crash repair business to be reasonably close. The location is mainly driven by the customer. If my personal driverless car needs crash repairs it can drive itself to the crash repair site, and a fleet service or a shared personal car service can replace my transport needs in the meantime.

If I was asked to drive my car (actual damage pictured below) to a service centre 40 km away I would not be very happy, but if my car can take itself then location becomes much less important and the costs of the business become far more important. Locating the crash repair business in areas of lower property costs with good transport links makes far more sense. It also means that the employees of the business will have lower property costs if they live locally. We already see this model in light manufacturing and food processing/handling facilities locating around hubs on ring roads, away from inner suburbs with high property prices.

If a fleet ownership model predominates over personal ownership this effect will be even higher as large scale fleets look for cost reductions through economies of scale.

So if we summarise all the factors together if we assume a 45% reduction in total accidents (50% of human error crashes) and a tripling of scale that comes from the changes described above we get an 82% reduction in the number of crash repair businesses in any city. I believe that the changes in scale may be even higher and we may end up with only 5-10% of the number of current crash repair businesses being economically viable.

If I own a crash repair business in any suburb in any of our major cities I will come under pressure from a high scale panel beater business set up on the fringes of the city with lower property costs.

So, if you are a crash repair business:

Assess whether now is a good time to sell to someone else who does not understand these changes.
If you think I am wrong then you should suspend that thought for just a few minutes and think about what it means to your business and your assets if I am right. Even if you think that chance is only 5% you should set up a series of questions for yourself to monitor in coming years so that you can change your mind if the changes start to happen. Those questions include:

Is the practical outcome of accident reduction matching the rhetoric of the technology experts and the modellers? Look for signs of early change, cities where adoption is at the forefront of the change and make an assessment as to whether the predictions on accident reduction are true (or even going to be exceeded) and then think about the timing of the implications.
Look for areas or cities where the first full scale mass adoption of driverless cars might take place. For example Singapore, with a small land mass, and a relatively authoritarian government might be one. This will give you early signs of what larger scale adoption might look like.
Is the adoption model going to be a personal one or a mass fleet one? If the model is primarily a personal one then you should be thinking about whether you can become one of the new mega panel beaters on the fringes of the city that will survive the change. If the model looks to be a primarily mass fleet adoption one then there are less possibilities. Those fleet operators will either run their own operations which are standardised and mechanised or they will use their economies of scale to drive down margins in the businesses that supply them. You can still run a good business that way but the opportunities will be limited and will require lots of capital to create the volume throughput and economies of scale required. You will have to compete with the Ray Malone’s of this world.
Are any early models of very large scale, city fringe located crash repair businesses starting to emerge anywhere around the world? Are they successful?
Are car companies changing their business models for car repairs. For instance electric cars have far less moving parts than internal combustion cars. Does that make a difference to your business model? Are modularised car construction and repair systems emerging that will increase the capacity to adopt robotic repair and maintenance systems that will advantage large throughput car repair and maintenance systems?

While these changes may take 15 years to start to significantly impact on the crash repair business, once they become obvious the window to realise the business value by sale will quickly snap shut.

This is just one of the many implications of change from the widescale adoption of driverless cars.I am writing a book on driverless vehicles with Chris Rice (@ricetopher). It is called “Rise of the Autobots: How driverless vehicles will transform our economies and our communities. Stay tuned for more writing as we develop our thinking further.

Paul Higgins

Electric Cars and the Legacy Issue

July 24, 2017July 24, 2017 / futuristpaul (Paul Higgins) / Leave a comment

Chris Rice and I are currently writing a book on the rise of autonomous vehicles and their widespread effects across our economies (entitled Rise of the Autobots: How Driverless Vehicles will change our Societies and our Economies). One of the keys to looking at what these changes might mean and the rate at which they will occur is the speed of adoption speed of electric cars and autonomous vehicles combined together.

There have been lots of excited announcements about electric cars over the last few months including:

India to make every single car electric by 2030 in bid to tackle pollution that kills millions

The Electric-Car Boom Is So Real Even Oil Companies Say It’s Coming

When Will Electric Cars Go Mainstream? It May Be Sooner Than You Think

The reality is that the adoption of electric cars will have several bottlenecks including but not limited to:

Battery availability.
Production capacity for manufacturing.
The reluctance of people to adopt the technology until they are completely sure that the charging issues and the range issue have been adequately dealt with.
The long-term nature of the turnover of the vehicle fleet.

Both battery production and electric car production are ramping up but the last point is very important when we start looking at the critical mass needed to disrupt a range of industries, including petrol stations and their supply chains, maintenance and repair systems, and the electric power grid. Even when it becomes a sensible economic decision to purchase a new electric car over an internal combustion engine (ICE) powered car, someone with a 7 year old vehicle is not going to immediately changeover. This is both due to the capital nature of the change and the fact that if electric cars are more economical than ICE cars the resale value of second hand ICE cars will fall dramatically, reducing the interest and capacity of people to purchase a new vehicle (if purchase is the model). This will be exacerbated if the new electric vehicles also have significant advantages in autonomy.

To illustrate this issue we took a look at the vehicle fleet in New South Wales in Australia If we look at the statistics at the end of the fourth quarter in 2016 it gives us a snapshot of the vehicle legacy issue. The following graph shows the year of manufacture for light vehicles registered in NSW at the end of 2016. The majority are passenger vehicles:

Source: http://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/about/corporate-publications/statistics/registrationandlicensing/tables/table113_2016q4.html – accessed July 24^th 2017

While the 2016 manufactured vehicles are under-represented in this graph as many 2016 vehicles are registered in 2017, it nevertheless gives a clear picture of the ownership structure of light vehicles. If we look deeper in the data we see that 20.1% of the registered light vehicles are manufactured prior to 2001.

If we look at heavy vehicles we get a similar picture albeit with different percentages:

There are some differences in the data between light and heavy vehicles:

The first is that there are significantly more 2007 heavy vehicles registered than any other year. This probably relates to GFC issues.
The second is that the heavy vehicle curve is lower than the light vehicle curve. This probably reflects a pattern of use where heavy vehicles are sold into a secondary market that will discount vehicles significantly if the economic model is significantly different than the new vehicle one, extending the useful economic life of the vehicles. This means that the percentage of total registered heavy vehicles prior to 2001 is 34.2%, much higher than light vehicles.
The third is that there are many more vintage models in the light vehicle category, reflecting the motoring enthusiast and restoration market. So there are 3,379 registered light vehicles manufactured 1900-1949, but only 21 heavy vehicles for the same period.

A very simplistic look at this data says that even if every vehicle sold new in Australia was electric from say 2025 was an electric car, and the purchase patterns remained stable after 5 years we would have between 31% and 40% electric light vehicles on the road and in 10 years it would be somewhere between 50 and 60%. This pattern is highly unlikely and so the real adoption rates will be well short of that. Every year that the purchase pattern is 50% electric and 50% ICE will slow the transition as those ICE cars will be on the road for a long time.

This adoption cycle is complicated by our view that increasing automation will result in more fleet ownership models, and shared car rides, reducing the total sales of new vehicles. While this means that battery and electric car manufacturing do not have to ramp up as much to get to 100% of new sales it changes the adoption curve.

Now both those simplistic analyses assume the normal pattern of car purchases and ownership will remain in place. That is also unrealistic. All we do know is that the adoption rates will be relatively slow because of the legacy issues and the turnover of the vehicle fleet as a whole. Cars are not smartphones. We will be doing some more modelling on the possible scenarios over the next few weeks. Follow us here if you want to see them and help us think through the changes.

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