The Electric Robotaxi Dream
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will we all abandon our cars in favour of self-driving taxi apps by the year 2030, or is this pure fantasy?
Justin Rowlatt takes on the many sceptical responses he received from readers to an article on the BBC website in which he sought to explain "Why you have (probably) bought your last car". In it, Justin laid out the thesis of tech futurist Tony Seba that the convergence of three new technologies - the electric vehicle, autonomous driving, and the ride-hailing app - together spelled the imminent death of the traditional family-owned petrol car.
But can AI really handle the complexities of driving? Is there enough lithium in the world for all those car batteries? And what if this new service becomes dominated by an overpriced monopolist? Just some of the questions that Justin pitches to a field of experts, including psychology professor Gary Marcus, management professor Michael Cusumano, renewable energy consultant Michael Liebreich, and Uber's head of transport policy Andrew Salzberg.
Credit: Laurence Knight
(Picture: Illustration of electric car; Credit: 3alexd/Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily with me, Justin Rowlatt. Today, we're revisiting a radical thesis |
| 0:08.0 | that the private car might very soon become a thing of the past. So imagine an Uber without a driver and electric. |
| 0:16.2 | We've lined up a panel of experts to address some of the many questions you asked about how this all might work. |
| 0:22.7 | Real driving requires all kinds of funny decisions. There's no shortage either of lithium or |
| 0:27.7 | cobalt. I don't know if anybody's got a patent out for how they would detect mess in an |
| 0:31.1 | autonomous car. So have you already bought your last car? Find out here on Business Daily. |
| 0:39.2 | The idea that the private car might have reached the end of the road isn't actually as absurd as you might think. |
| 0:47.3 | Changes in technology can very quickly change behaviour. |
| 0:51.3 | Just think how smartphones have transformed our lives. And tech profits like |
| 0:55.8 | Tony Seba of the think tank RethinkX say now the car industry faces its own iPhone moment. |
| 1:02.9 | When you think about why the smartphone happened 2007, the reason is that all the technologies that made a $600 smartphone possible happened 2007. |
| 1:18.1 | Similarly, by 2021 or so, when the convergence of autonomous, electric, and on-demand, so, |
| 1:27.4 | so imagine an Uber without a driver and electric. of autonomous, electric, and on-demand. |
| 1:30.9 | So imagine an Uber without a driver and electric. |
| 1:37.9 | That convergence will essentially mean that the cost of transportation per kilometer will be 10 times less expensive than ownership of cars. |
| 1:42.8 | And 10 years after autonomous vehicles are ready and approved |
| 1:47.6 | by regulators, which we expect to be 2021, the individual ownership of petrol cars will be obsolete, |
| 1:57.2 | will be over. So Tony Seba's thesis is that self-driving electric taxis will be so |
| 2:03.1 | cheap, you just won't bother to have your own car. I was so intrigued by Mr. Sieber's ideas |
| 2:08.7 | that I wrote an article about it for the BBC website. It proved very popular, millions of hits |
| 2:14.1 | and thousands of comments. Lots of you were skeptical and had all sorts of |
| 2:19.4 | interesting thoughts about why things might not unfold quite as smoothly as I suggested. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.