“Crushed Every Four Years”

Guest Post by Eric Peters

If you’ve been wondering what’s behind the electric car/automated car push, Ford’s John Rich just let the cat out of the sack:

“We will exhaust and crush a car every four years in this business.”

That business being the automated/electric car business.

Rich should know, since he’s the head of Ford’s Autonomous Vehicles Operations. He really means automated, of course – since the very last thing the cars he’s talking about are is autonomous.

Look it up for yourself.

Autonomous means independent from external control.

Nothing could be less autonomous than a car entirely under the control of the governmental-industrial combine which lays downs the operating parameters (via the programming) of the car, over which you have no control whatsoever. How do you control a car without a steering wheel, brake or accelerator pedal?

A car you don’t even own?

Instead, a ride you share.

And it isn’t even that – because sharing implies freely letting someone else borrow or use whatever it is, whereas what Rich and the rest of the car industry have in mind is perpetual renting. Serial payments, deducted automatically on an a la carte basis or via a “subscription.”

You own nothing – and that which you do not own, you do not control. Orwellian doublespeak conveys the opposite of this inarguable fact.

The only thing under your control about an automated/ride-shared electric car is whether to get in the thing – and when to get out – and even that can be suborned externally  if they decide you don’t deserve a ride (extrapolate from OnStar’s well-known ability to unlock a car remotely, via over-the-airwaves signaling).

Forget about spur-of-the-moment drives to wherever you like, whenever you like, as long as you like and how you like . . . and without anyone else even knowing about it.

People are babes in the woods about what’s coming. Some of it is already here. Has been here, for years. And they haven’t even noticed.

It takes time to build a hog pen.

ABS; traction/stability control – which you don’t control. In many cars, you can’t turn it off, either. The question isn’t why you might want to but why aren’t you allowed to. It’s still technically your car. And yet, it’s increasingly not under your control. The car industry has been clawing back control, piece-by-piece, in order to get people used to a new kind of car.

And to get them used to no longer driving it – which they barely do anymore.

The sun is setting, fast…

Things like ABS and traction/stability control – which became common back in the ’90s – weren’t too intrusive. At least not to the sensibilities of the average A to B driver. But people who drove noticed – and despised – the intrusion. The pre-emption. They loathed the principle these intrusions established.

The can’t-say-no-to-it taking away of control over their car.

There are perfectly sound reasons for wanting to be able to lock up the tires and put the car into a controlled skid. A skilled driver will know all about this. Contrariwise, there was skill in knowing how to avoid locking up the tires and how to steer out of a skid. It used to be taught. It was once expected as a minimal competence.

All snatched away – supposedly for saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety but actually for control.

Cars used to be 100 percent under our control.

No interference with brake/throttle/steering. The radio didn’t peremptorily mute when you put the shifter into reverse. The computer didn’t put the transmission into neutral if you tried to back the car up with the door open. All part of the package now.

Soon, they’ll be under their control entirely – the principle having been established decades ago via the acceptance of can’t-say-no-to-them ABS, traction/stability control and all the rest of the creeping electronic kudzu.

If these things keep use saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe just imagine how much saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafer we’ll soon be.

Note how pushy it’s gotten over just the past three or four years. Driver “assists” – Lane Keep, Brake and Speed Limit – increasingly unavoidable in new cars and soon impossible to avoid. Speed Limit “Assist” having been mandated already. It all congeals. In order to “assist” you from “speeding,” control over throttle will be wrested.

It already has been wrested, in case you didn’t know.

A computer (and the coder who wrote the software) controls the throttle in pretty much every car made since circa 2005 or so. You are allowed the fiction of control, for now – so you won’t get restive while the pen is built around you.

Brakes are under the car’s control, too – which means under the control of those who programmed it.  Not you. If the car decides it’s time to brake, it will. It can just as easily be programmed to stop – or to not move in the first place.

Once the “assists” are ubiquitous and can’t be turned off and every car is wired in to the “Internet of Things” via the 5G network they’re building around us at this very moment, it’ll be time for us to hand over the keys but keep on paying.

The era of the automated electric car will have arrived.

They’ll be short-lived cars, too.

Ride-shared/automated electric cars will be in service almost continuously, wearing out much sooner – but collecting far more in ride-shared debits/subscriptions than single monthly car payments.

That is where the money is, you see – which is the happy flip side of control.

The car industry is tired of the petty 3-5 percent margins on the sale of individual cars to individual people. And of cars that last much too long.

A paid-off car is a bad car.

By renting a single car to many people, you make a lot more money. And not just by selling transportation but by crushing it. Instead of once every 15-plus years – which is usually how long an individually sold/individually driven car lasts – every four years, as Rich says.

Of course, someone’s going to have to pay for all that newness.

Guess who?

The price of crushing automated electric cars every four years will be folded into the cost of your ride-share. Which will also cost you control over your mobility – that term having passed into the Lexicon of doublespeak along with “autonomous” and “assist.” All of their former happy meanings palimpsested into uglified new ones, while retaining the superficial emotional appeal of their original meanings.

Like “freedom.”

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Shark
Shark

I think I’ll stick with my motorcycle.

Vote Harder
Vote Harder

“When they say peace and safety, then shall sudden destruction come upon them.” ~ Somewhere in the bible.

grace country pastor

Yup, it’s coming… the masses will beg.

1 Thes 5

TC
TC

Cheesy B-Grade 80’s flick “The Last Chase” comes to mind.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082642/

Grog
Grog

I had never heard of that movie TC.
Good catch.
B-Grade is probably generous. It ‘stars’ Lee Majors.

TC
TC

It’s one of those movies you enjoy as a kid then are disappointed if you ever go back and watch again as an adult. The terrifyingly funny thing about the movie is that Lee Majors makes a cross-country break in his race car to join up with the car culture, freedom-loving souls in California. My how times have changed.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Love that movie. Part of what the song red barchetta is based on.

yah sure
yah sure

I’m sure the idea of switching from our paid-for cars and trucks to one of these is going to fly. what about the people who live I the sticks? If we all lived in big cities(agenda 21) and having these cars everywhere and you could just use a phone to hail one. or just raise your hand and one of the thousands of cameras will report that you need a subscription-based cab ride. I plan on living in the sticks with my gas guzzler truck and a small car, that are paid for.

Anonymous
Anonymous

there are similar arguments about a cashless world “what about the people who don’t have credit or bank accounts”. These ideas of automation, 5G controlling everything, cashless society, that’s all they are, ideas.

I won’t hold my breath, the next few years will probably see a lot of companies just disappear, those same companies that barely made it through 2008.

These ideas are how managers make themselves feel productive (and we all know managers are not productive, they are just grocery clerks, sent to collect a bill)

Chubby Bubbles
Chubby Bubbles

Same thing with computers. I used to know what almost every file did on my 1980s computers. Now there are thousands of times as many files, many are unseen, and no application is under my effective control: they are always talking to the “mother ship” while harassing me about updates and about not being connected to the cloud. I tried to find a good notes app (like Evernote) where the content would stay on my computer.. doesn’t seem to exist. Tried to find a good financial app… ditto.

We used to use computers.
Now the computers use us.

I just heard an ad for a business application.. gee, who wouldn’t want their private payroll, H/R records, bank details, P/L statements, etc. just out there for anyone to grab? WTF?

Anonymous
Anonymous

if your on Win10, then you can use a built in app called Sticky notes, like a virtual post-it on your screen, stays there between boots, only goes away when you delete it.

but your right, win10 is always scooping up all your browsing habits, clicks, etc and sending them to MS servers “to help protect you from jihadi hackers who will blow up your house by sending the secret command to overcharge the Li-on batteries”

it’s true, it’s all true, they put a back door into all devices, to make the batteries explode, that’s why you always see vids of e-cig pens exploding, yup, connected to the dark web, hackers everywhere.

MrLiberty
MrLiberty

Things have a way of pushing back:

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EC
EC

That’s a cgi, you can see the thermite on the edge of the car’s rear window.

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