Auto Industry Pro, Bob Lutz Says No One will Own a Car in 20 Years
Bob Lutz is quite a name in the auto industry. This former marine has been with automakers as big as Ford, GM, BMW, and Chrysler. More often than not, he has worked as the resident “car guy” for all of them. This product and sales maestro has been famous for even turning the most frugal people to buying the most exorbitant cars.
And, now, this very car guru is out to tell you something that will surprise you as much as it surprised us. Lutz opines (much in assonance with Elon Musk) that the days of the personal car will be gone soon. It is the colossal autonomous fleets that will replace the cars. That, he suggests, will happen not too far in the future. 20 years is the figure he gives us.
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Why Lutz Says so
Lutz is a semi-retired connoisseur with a ton of industry knowledge now, who is currently partnering with Henrik Fisker at VLF Automotive. VLF Automotive manufactures super expensive brawny cars. Despite the fact that Lutz is at the moment working with an automobile maker, he very conspicuously airs his opinion. Being a guy who has been long associated with the automobile industry, he knows it inside out. This is one reason why he expresses admiration for Elon Musk, but doesn’t refrain from taking shots at Tesla.
Lutz, by the way, likes to stay up to date with the best of trends in transportation. However, this latest one from him has almost sent shock waves down the spine of the industry. He mentions while writing for Automotive News, “[t]he auto industry is on an accelerating change curve.”
“For hundreds of years, the horse was the prime mover of humans and for the past 120 years it has been the automobile.”
“Now we are approaching the end of the line for the automobile because travel will be in standardized modules. The end state will be the fully autonomous module with no capability for the driver to exercise command.”
What’s Ahead for the Auto Industry
Since it comes from the car guru who had once given us Dodge Viper, it seems only more credible. Now that Lutz is ready to surrender voluntarily to module transportation, he tells us that the change might come in faster than we ever suspect. This change, he prophesies, will come in mostly due to the self-driven cars that are making roads and passengers safer than ever.
How he sees it 20 years down the line is that there will be no fatalities on the road because we won’t be driving our car on our own – no place for human error. And, we may not even be allowed to do so unless we have a fortune enough to buy private tracks and drive our vintage cars on them.
Going by that, it seems a rather dull idea to invest in brand now speed machines anymore. Perhaps buying used cars may seem a brighter idea in the light of the future. So, all the automakers and car dealers may not be very happy with this. The only businesses that may benefit from this cataclysm are giants like “Uber, Lyft, FedEx, UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, utility companies, delivery services,” in the future or second hand car dealers as of now.
Perhaps the best of car makers now will soon become forgotten automobile makers who none remembers. Looks like quite a revolutionary prophecy that can make a lot of market for American and Japanese used cars right now.
