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2030: Transportation

Transportation: We've gone from driving cars and trucks based on carbon, gas and the internal combustion engine, to vehicles based on big batteries and computers. They mostly drive themselves, or do so in cooperative packs, talking to each other on a continuous basis with respect to traffic flow and other important matters. Cars have become, essentially,...

Transportation: We've gone from driving cars and trucks based on carbon, gas and the internal combustion engine, to vehicles based on big batteries and computers. They mostly drive themselves, or do so in cooperative packs, talking to each other on a continuous basis with respect to traffic flow and other important matters. Cars have become, essentially, anticipatory data-sensing computers on wheels. The industry has changed as well: rather than a few car and truck manufacturers, there are hundreds, as the very form factor of the vehicle changed once we eliminated the carbon-gas engine - the arrival of battery-electric led to the emergence of all kinds of new competitors because the process of conceiving, designing and building a vehicle became much more straightforward. And the after-market parts industry has collapsed, as the average number of parts in a vehicle went from 46,000 in a carbon-gas vehicle down to a few hundred with battery-electric.
20-trends-into-2030foresight-receipt
Publish Date2019-12-24
Updated Date2026-09-18
Made Date2019-12-24
Target Date2030-12-31
Horizonlater
Outcomeopen
Confidencemedium

Prediction #1 in 20 Trends into 2030.

Transportation: We’ve gone from driving cars and trucks based on carbon, gas and the internal combustion engine, to vehicles based on big batteries and computers. They mostly drive themselves, or do so in cooperative packs, talking to each other on a continuous basis with respect to traffic flow and other important matters. Cars have become, essentially, anticipatory data-sensing computers on wheels. The industry has changed as well: rather than a few car and truck manufacturers, there are hundreds, as the very form factor of the vehicle changed once we eliminated the carbon-gas engine - the arrival of battery-electric led to the emergence of all kinds of new competitors because the process of conceiving, designing and building a vehicle became much more straightforward. And the after-market parts industry has collapsed, as the average number of parts in a vehicle went from 46,000 in a carbon-gas vehicle down to a few hundred with battery-electric.

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