Laziness Drives Progress

Via Rinspeed

I think about autonomous cars a lot.

That’s partly because I don’t enjoy driving. However, a lot of people do. Many of those people promise that they will never buy a self-driving vehicle. I propose that laziness will drive that promise right out of them.

Today, even people who own cars will occasionally take a taxi. To the airport, or out drinking, or when traveling. As taxis become autonomous, they will be even more convenient. Imagine tapping your smartphone, then 30 seconds later a car arrives for you, and you can step inside and keep dicking around on your phone, or have a meal, or get work done, until it drops you off right at your destination. And it only costs a few dollars.

Even people who love driving will take advantage of that once in a while. At first maybe it’ll only be to get to the airport. But then it’ll be when they have a deadline coming up, or are really hung over, or are just feeling lazy.

As those situations become more common, and driving your own car becomes less common, the per-trip cost of owning a car becomes prohibitive. Is it worth tens of thousands of dollars in purchase price, fuel, maintenance, and insurance just to drive a car once a day? Once a week? What about once a month?

“I’m too lazy to drive, just this once” can quickly become “I haven’t driven in a month and I might as well sell my car.” As more and more people succumb to laziness and rely on a cloud of autonomous vehicles, houses will gradually lose their driveways and garages, and the thrill of driving will be confined to go-kart tracks.

In short, human laziness will lead to a more efficient, car-ownership-free world.

I think it’ll be a good change. The people who disagree will be too lazy to resist it.


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One response to “Laziness Drives Progress”

  1.  Avatar
    Anonymous

    Maybe they really won't buy autonomous cars. There is not too much use in personally owning one. It'd be trivial to share them, since you can just call them to wherever you are. It seems likely that quite some people will subscribe to a car-usage-service, rather than buying one.

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