Bob Lutz is Senile . . . Let’s Hope

Guest Post by Eric Peters

The only rational explanation for Bob Lutz’ recent column predicting the imminent doom of autonomous cars – and of autonomous driving – is senile dementia.

Or something much worse.

See the picture above – of him with Elon Musk.

Lutz writes that within 20 years, at the most, every autonomous car will be scrapped or taken off the road – and that everyone will be herded, like cattle, into automated “modules,” as he describes them – to be summoned by app and paid for via debt/credit card.

These “modules” will, of course, be electric.

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Here’s Bob . . .

“The end state,” according to Lutz, will be the fully automated modules (he uses autonomous, which is the acme of illiteracy; I have made the appropriate substitution) with no capability for the driver to exercise command. You will call for it, it will arrive at your location, you’ll get in, input your destination and go to the freeway.”

Human-driven vehicles “will be legislated off the highways.”

Whisk! Just like that.

No more car companies. Or dealers. No car lots – new or used.

No motorcycles, either.

Just transportation service providers dunning us per ride, like Uber and Lyft – except without the option to opt out.

Car brands – especially performance car brands like BMW and Audi and Porsche – will become irrelevant and go away because the “modules” will all be the same. One electric motor being just like the next one.

And they will go the same, too.

No more autonomous movement. Just queuing up. One “module” among many, all moving at the same pace – and not your pace.

“Nobody will be passing anybody else on the highway,” Lutz explains. Everyone will be driven at the same speed, that speed to be determined by the central government-corporate hive.

This will be “the death knell for companies such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi” that – up to now – have sold superior performance and driving dynamics. Lutz is right about that – if he’s right about automated cars – er, “modules.”

One might be a different color or shape, seat two or four or six – but functionally there will be no difference.

M&Ms that move in lockstep, that’s all.

Only a privileged elite – those who can afford it – will be allowed to keep autonomous automobiles as other than static displays. And the tiny handful of autonomous relics that remain operational and in private hands will only be allowed on privately owned roads and tracks.

Billionaires and millionaires will still be able to drive – just as they are currently able to fly – privately – without being groped by the Heimatsicherheitsdeinst, aka Homeland Security. Because “terrorists” can’t afford to charter a private plane, you see,

Bet you didn’t know that.

And like the felon processing treatment one now must endure at airports, the future Lutz envisions will not be the end result of a voluntary transition, as for instance the horse and buggy to the autonomous automobile.

People – well, the masses of people – will be forced to give up their cars; compelled to accept being carted around in “modules.” Not because it’s preferable but because the ruling elite will – is – doing everything in its power to impose the end of autonomy upon the populace. To herd them. To extinguish one of the last things that is still largely autonomous – under our control:

Our freedom to move as we see fit.

It is as horrible and bleak and totalitarian a vision as that conjured by Orwell in 1984, of a boot stomping on a human face . . . forever.

I admire Lutz. I met him several times back in the ‘90s. I doubt he remembers; I was a young journalist among dozens of others; he was a car industry kahuna – and the guy is a car guy. But he is also an old guy now. He is 85 – and his vision of The Automated Future (and the “end of the “automotive era”) is as glaucomic as it is tyrannical.

For openers, Lutz and other technocratic fantasists have an awful lot of faith in the infallibility of technology – which is the premise underlying the push for it. Human drivers can’t be trusted – Elon says so! – because they make mistakes. But technology never makes mistakes . . .

Computers are infallible and perfectly dependable. Like your laptop, for instance.

Lutz, being a pilot, ought to know better.

He knows that automated technology isn’t infallible when it comes to aircraft. It is why there is a human in the left seat – and despite all the automated systems in aircraft, the human can still control the aircraft – precisely because technology isn’t infalllible.

Wear and tear will kill you as effectively on the road as it will at 35,000 feet when  a “glitch” occurs and there’s no longer any way for the humans inside to retake control.

To trust automated cars with our lives will mean frequent – and expensive – safety checks and mandatory scheduled replacement of major components, just to be safe – as in aviation.

Aviation involves a manageable number of perhaps a few thousand planes nationwide. But if Lutz is right, there will be millions of “modules,” necessary to transport millions of people every single day, all day long.

How will millions of “modules” be regularly inspected – and replaced, on timetable – to assure the safety of the automated technology?

This gets into logistics.

These millions of “modules” will also rack up the miles sooner and wear and tear will happen even more rapidly than is the case with the privately owned autonomous car. Because the “modules” will be in near constant use, transporting one person after the next, all day long and all week long – whereas the privately owned autonomous car isn’t wearing most of the time because most of the time it’s not being used.

This gets into logistics – and money.

Who will pay for all of this?

How will they pay for it?

Lutz does not say.

How about the capital investment in autonomous cars? There are millions of autonomous cars (and a very large number of motorcycles) on the road today – and millions more will be built each year, for the foreseeable future. In 20 years’ time, will the government-corporate nexus really issue a fatwa that requires they all be thrown away – without compensating their owners?

What if they object?

Lutz doesn’t seem to care.

What about the effect on the economy of the tanking of every major car company in the world? Millions of people rendered unemployed – not because of the appearance of a better mousetrap, but because of government edict?

Lutz has no comment.

Lutz does say that the “modules” will  “merge seamlessly into a stream of other modules traveling at 120, 150 MPH. “

If you believe this, the proverbial check’s in the mail . . .   

In fact, the “modules” will operate at the pace of the least common denominator – which is the abiding characteristic of everything the government does. It will take longer to get where you’re going. And the cost in terms of liberty lost will be incalculable. 

How will “modules” work outside of dense urban cores? Will people who live in the countryside, in rural areas, be forcibly relocated, Kulak-style? If not, how will they get around if autonomous cars are outlawed?

Is that the real plan? To relocate everyone to densely populated urban cores? So they can be herded like cattle? Who thinks this is a good thing? Besides the technocrats, that is?

Why Lutz – once upon a time a car guy – seems to be happy about this prospect is a mystery.

Here’s to hoping it’s just the fog of old age.

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hardscrabble farmer

Watch and listen, especially at the .42 second mark forward.

Have you eyes? Ears? A mind to process the contradictory statements and observable realities without having your head explode?

Do I sound like Crispin Glover? Is that an inside joke?

Dutchman
Dutchman

And they are building penitentiaries, oops – I mean public school buildings.

DRUD
DRUD

Darth Vader threatening to melt George McFly’s brain if he doesn’t ask Lorraine out?

hardscrabble farmer

On the other hand…

Fiatman60
Fiatman60

I’m pretty sure SAM can do that as well, with a bit of program tweeking HF

MMinLamesa
MMinLamesa

Wow

b
b

HSF,
I do not see a machine replicating that an time soon. Truly impressive.
Bob,

Dutchman
Dutchman

As a computer scientist – it’s never going to happen. Maybe in Nevada, Arizona? But what about snow and ice? That ‘technology’ won’t work here in Minnesocold. For the technology to work – it has to work everywhere 24/7/365.

This is sort of similar to the ‘bike craze’ that’s fucking up our streets, in many cities. Here in Minneapolis (thanks to our mayor ‘Bike Lane Betsy’) they have gone over the top with destroying in-town major roads with bike lanes. Many folks have never seen a bicycle on any of these streets. But the socialist claim it will be a future way of alternate transportation. Really. We have ice and snow 6 months a year – what percentage of the people who bike, are going to bike in winter conditions?

Same concept – if it doesn’t work 24/7/365 it’s not a real source of transportation.

Done in Dallas
Done in Dallas

I have some co-workers that are wet dreaming for this. I don’t get it as one drives a hopped up Mustang and the other a Vette.

As a computer scientist, I will also agree that it is just not workable. These things will need redundant hardware for safety and price themselves out of range for all but the rich to own. And with all the external variables weather (as pointed out) and randomness of variables to sensors etc, I will not place my trust in this.

Sorry Dutchman, I am a cyclist. I do have the smarts to stay off of main thoroughfares and will opt for mountain biking on trails when weather permits around here. However, I tell these coworkers, if this happens in 20 years, I’ll take to the streets as a 75 year old and slow traffic to 10 miles an hour…

Dutchman
Dutchman

Hey Dallas, I’m not against cyclists – it’s just that the socialist’s that run Minneapolis are against cars. They have fucked up main inner-city streets for bike lanes. However there are hardly any bikes.

Done in Dallas
Done in Dallas

I didn’t think you did. I actually complain about those that hit the main thoroughfares and slow traffic. Last night on the way home from work there were 2 Mormon kids on a 6 lane busy 45 MPH main road at night. Not in there right mind.

We get the same complaints from folks in the burbs here about the waste money on signage and striping. Most of these are on neighborhood thoroughfares with a sub 30 MPH limit. These are usually already wide 1 lane roads. I hit them sometimes.

I’d ride to work, but there are no good and safe routes for cyclist on my side of town.

hardscrabble farmer

Or tradesmen and their tools, or agriculture or any of a myriad of other uses that some 4-wheeled toaster is simply not going to be able to accommodate.

comment image?1330609711

Still waiting…

El Magnifico
El Magnifico

Of course the elites’ plan is to herd us into urban prisons. That is what Agenda 21 and 2030 is all about.

Tom S.
Tom S.

I’ve always liked and respected the hell out of Lutz, but he’s way off on this one. He may be right in some regards, at least as far as a few wealthy, densely populated areas go, but not for the country – or the world – at large.

Some variation on that system may find good applications for surface transportation in densely populated, wealthy cities. In fact, once upon a time we had a version of that, with street cars operating nearly everywhere and at very high frequencies, serving the same role as the “modules” he envisions. It may be hard to imagine now, but in the 1930’s, the busier street car lines in cities like Chicago operated on a 30 second headway! Miss your street car? No problem, the next one is 30 seconds behind. That system was dismantled on purpose by the auto industry after the war – search “national city lines” to see just the tip of that iceberg.

The fact is, that he is a Car Guy, and obviously (as evidenced by this ) knows little about infrastructure and just how long it takes to get anything like that up and running and reliable enough to be depended on totally. How the hell is a society which can’t even maintain its current infrastructure adequately going to construct – or rather overlay – a whole new one in 20 years???

The great Harry Callahan said is so many years ago: “A man’s got to know his limitations”. In this particular case, it appears that Lutz has forgotten his.

i forget
i forget

Prerogatives are the a priori limitations…that get Rodney Dangerfield respect (essentially, none). Eastwood later characterized DH as a fascist – prerogatives spurned & ignored – but scripting can & does frame a fascist into a hero. And the thin blue line is a masterful script-framer.

Last time Bourdain was in Rome, the subject of Mussolini arose. Even tho mobs killed him, many auld lang syne fondly still. Like yo does, for his stuffed-suit “strongman” & strawman screaming mimi (ha, German ww2 rocket artillery) boogieman symbol-meme.

carnac the insignificant
carnac the insignificant

The dealer told me that electric vehicles are “wildly unpopular”, but they sell out over sticker price on the factory hotrod cars and trucks. Got a guy coming from florida paying 17,000 bucks over sticker price for a raptor. To north of syracuse area. People want those and are willing to travel to get them. Note that electrics are subsidized to sell at all. People like to drive real cars. The future of the module as a vehicle of choice is bleak.

Grog
Grog

Government ideas are so popular they have to be mandated.

I am so glad that I was able to experience this autonomous car.

comment image

bluestem
bluestem

Back when cars were cars, John

DRUD
DRUD

Predicting stuff is hard, especially about the future. Everyone gets tunnel vision to some degree or other when they make predictions. They look at the continued exponential growth of processing power, memory and code complexity and see nothing but more of the same and the it is only logical that since technology has so improved (taken over?) society to this point that it not only can but MUST continue. Logistics are a minor problem that will be taken care of naturally at some point in the future, as are energy and manufacturing considerations; the economics won’t matter, because hey the governments can print money–it’s worked so far, so it always will. And of course, all the people out there will adopt it, because they adopted the internet and smartphones didn’t they. And hey, complexity is great and doesn’t ever collapse in on itself. And solving problems caused by technology with more technology makes perfect sense, just like solving problems caused by too much debt with borrowing, and solving problems caused by bombing the shit out of people around the world with more fucking bombing.
And the fact that an overdue CME, EMP, WWIII (cyber or kinetic) or Pandemic destroys the very foundations upon which all this ridiculous complexity is based…well that’s just silly pessimism from a bunch of tin foil hat wearing doomers.

Oh, and, that we’re in the middle of what promises to be a devastating 4th Turning (I read a great article about this somewhere recently) is entirely of no consequence.

And let’s ignore the question of just because a thing can be done does that mean it should be done? I mean, hell, we’ve been ignoring that for two centuries of the industrial age and it’s worked out great.

Bring on Driverless Vehicles. Their as wonderful as they are inevitable.

i forget
i forget

Prediction→dick. Penis envy might be a thing. A swizzle stick to stir the Malthus milk with.

Dav
Dav

They won’t need millions of modules, they will have eliminated the majority of the population by then.

Iconoclast421
Iconoclast421

Oh its coming. The modules are coming! For the simple reason that they are going to print so much money to give to the 1% that it is going to rape the average wage earner to the point where money that used to buy a car today will only afford them a few trips on a “module”. (And yet inflation will laughably be 1% through the whole transition). I know this is coming because people took the raping they took over the last 10 years without stringing up banksters. So they will be willing to take the raping they will take over the next 20. After 20 more years of this, the median wage aint gonna be able to afford shit let alone an actual car. If you make $60k today, just imagine making $25k and what you’d have to give up. Cuz that’s what they’re gonna take out of everyone’s ass. $60k in wages today is like $80k just 10 years ago, if that.

TC
TC
ChrisNJ
ChrisNJ

Nice pic Grog. I had one of those. ’69 Judge. I was 16 and stupid. Back in the early 80’s
So………………Pay the insurance bill that month or new front tires. Chose the insurance.
smashed it into a pole (not going fast) with bald front tires in the rain (hydroplaned).

I went to the Philly custom car show years later and saw one there and the guy that owned it heard me say “hey, that’s just like the car I had”. He came over and asked me about what I said, interviewed me a little about ‘my’ car that I smashed bad.
“kid, you ruined one of the top ten Judges in Pennsylvania”. He was pretty mad at me.
Sorry, I said.
I had no idea is was that special. Just that it was cool, and I wanted to be different than all the kids who had SS’s. And I remember I paid $3200 for it, my mom chipped in the $500 I was light. Worked my ass of for it. Made $250 a week for two summers as a construction laborer (go fer).
The somewhat good news was that the prior owner wanted it back, he paid me $1600 for a totaled Judge, put new frame under it. Was still a Judge, but not original matching.
Sorry to all the Judge lovers out there.
BTW, that car would spin both rears 4 gears deep with 4 people in it. But I never raced it, although everyone wanted to drag race me. couldn’t afford the tires, haha. It was reported to me that it was a low 13 second car, although I never tested it.

Trapped in Portlandia
Trapped in Portlandia

Lutz assumes that computers can be made to work perfectly 100% of the time. What an ignorant asshole! Hasn’t he ever used a Windows computer.

Rather than Lutz’s crazy vision, my vision is a bunch of autonomous “modules” cruising down the freeway at 50 mph (or 150 mph as Lutz believes) and only a couple feet from each other, because everything is working fine. Then some hacker kid sitting in his basement hacks into the systems of only one or two of the “modules” and causes the mother of all pileups.

That will be the day that autonomous vehicles get put on the shelf for another 20-30 years.

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