Google, Apple, Uber, Tesla and the future of cars

A comrade from abroad visited the People's Cycling Front HQ over christmas. As he works for a european motor manufacturer, his debriefing was very informative.

What scares them? Tesla and Google; to a lesser extent Apple and Uber

Apple: for providing expensive status toys that don't have wheels on them. Phones are the new coming-of-age accessory, the thing you need to stay in touch with your friends. Ask people which they would do without, car or phone, and the under 30s say: phone. It's the 50+ who say "car". And, like tobacco company customers, their over-use of the product is causing them to die out.

Apple have done more though: set the expectation on how easy devices are to use, and how fast devices evolve. A 3 year old phone? How ancient! Yet car manufacturer "in car experiences" are designed to stay in a car for its entire life, and take years of effort beforehand. The car companies just aren't nimble enough here. Their user experience sucks: go to a car shop and either stare in horror at the number of buttons, or in a different kind of horror at a touch screen that requires attention.

Google: for leading the self-driving car work. Mercedes may have been showing off their self-driving car, but it still likes to offer the "driving experience", while allowing you to rotate the seat 180 degrees for a meeting with your colleagues or family. Google don't care about driving experience, and don't see their users caring either. They want the Apple market -and if you go online via the phone on a train, bus or car: they're happy. They don't have the myth of the open road or their motoring heritage brand to sell. They have something useful: extra online time with your friends. If there's one thing the car companies like about Google is that it may be possible to work with them. Though there the android experience scares them. Google own Android; phone companies come and go.

Uber: not a direct threat to the car companies, yet. What they represent though is is the driving accessory to the iPhone. Uber relies on all their customers having a smartphone. Which means it is OK to spend the money you'd spend on a car on a phone, a bike, public transport and Uber. Throw in car-club and boris bike and provided you live in a city: no car is needed. That is only going to get worse. Every time someone takes a ride with Uber, they know the pickup and dropoff points, and can start planning ahead. Taxi drivers may know that London Paddington is busy when the trains from Bristol arrive, but Uber can know more: that there are 12 customers heading in from Reading, with regular routes for 6 of them.., so start pre-emptively shifting vehicles.

Where Uber really have power is the money behind them. That lets them go beyond evolving the application to be better than anything competition can do, and get into a world that until now only the taxi and car organisations have done: get involved with government. They need to do that to overcome the barriers that some cities are putting up. The LTDA have got power in london by regulatory capture of the TfL taxi licensing authority, and access to press and politicians when in their cars. They can be individual lobbyists for their causes. Except who wants a conversation with a taxi driver when you can be on your phone doing interesting things? Meanwhile Uber has the strength to go to state and federal governments in the US to overcome city restrictions, restrictions which start to come over as anti-consumer.

But Uber can do more, because of their near neighbours in Silicon Valley. The LTDA represents Taxi Drivers. Uber represents Uber. If Uber could roll out a service with a fleet of self-driving electric cars, they would. Their customers aren't paying for 20th century driving experience, they are paying for a ride to wherever —and the chance to catch up with things on their phone while it happens.

With international scale, Uber have the opportunity to work with google for self-driving cars that meet the needs of today's customers.  They are also building up the skills needed to lobby in cities and countries, initially to make Uber legal...but those skills and contacts will help with any transition to self-driving vehicles.

Which brings us round to the one that impresses yet terrifies the car manufacturers: Tesla.

Mikhael and the copenhagenize crew may emphasise the "auto industry" as sellers of an obsolete brand, fighting back against demographic and social change, but Tesla threatens to render the existing car companies obsolete, even while driving itself remains a valued tool.

It comes down to this: what is a car company?

More precisely: what are the core skills of a car company, the barriers to entry which keep competition out?

The answer: engines

Car companies may have brands and marketing, different sub-brands (VW Audi group being the big EU example with Audi, VW, Seat and Skoda), but what takes up most of their R&D budget today, and most of their capital costs is engine plant.  Which is why all vehicles in VAG share motors from the same common pool of engines: shared NRE costs and CAPEX for plants that can cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

What Tesla say is: so what?

New mechanical engines are incredibly expensive to develop. It's not just a matter of designing something powerful, efficient, quiet, not-very polluting, reliable and easy to maintain, it's about designing engines that are cost effective to manufacture. Its those factories that take the capital.

The existing car companies may have some of the best mechanical engineers in the world, capable of designing the engines and the factories, but Tesla have come along and said: its no longer about petrol and diesel engines —it's about batteries, electric motors and the software around them.

The existing car companies may have manufacturing and supply chains optimised to keep stock down to a minimum, partner with their suppliers to get exactly the right number of spark plugs to the factory floor when needed —but that's a supply chain for mechanical parts.  Tesla have come along and said: those moving parts? You'll be needing less of those. Stop worrying about engine cooling, focus on keeping batteries at optimum temperature —and how to recharge them fast.

The existing car companies may have the dealers that nobody else can use to break into a market, but again Tesla have looked at apple retail outlets and said "we like that". Tesla don't have dealers, they are a vertical business, from battery to customer.

That vertical business model transforms servicing. If Toyota have to do a recall, it's expensive, some cars will be missed and its a massive hit to the company. Whereas Tesla have all their cars online, with telemetry and the ability to take software updates. Tesla didn't have to do a recall to (temporarily) disable a suspension-lowering facility while questions existed about its safety. Tesla pushed out the change, later on reversing it. No other player can do that.

In ten years, Tesla have gone from being a company with nothing to being a car company whose battery, charging and vehicle monitoring and management skills make those incumbents look like dinosaurs. And they back up those skills with factories that are far more modern than what the incumbents have. Yes, Tesla cars are expensive today: but they are the new status toys. And those costs can only come down, as Tesla scales.

And guess who are within range of each other: Google, Tesla, Apple and Uber.

The centre of the motoring universe has moved, from Germany and Detroit to California, where it has the potential to do for the incumbents what Apple did for Nokia: destroy them, not out of maliciousness, but because they weren't agile enough, because they stayed in the old world —rather than see the future.

Think about that when the LTDA protest about the cycle superhighway, when a taxi driver cuts you up: Google, Apple, Uber, Tesla

If an autonomous car break the speed limit -who takes the blame?

Autonomous Cars are the great hope of the car industry, ironically, to solve all problems that cars have created: congestion, safety, parking, etc. It's also an obsession with google -maybe in a misguided belief that it will solve problems, more likely that they want to get all those extra hours people spend in traffic -browsing time.

Ignoring the technical issues -will they work- there are legal issues -and that's something cycling and road safety campaigners need to sort out -before the decisions are made for them.

Start with a simple question: If an autonomous car break the speed limit -who takes the blame?

This is a simple question but gets complex fast.  Today, if a car breaks the speed limit, the driver takes the blame. The driver is expected to be aware of what type of road it is, and what extra road signs show restrictions on the mandated maximums: 50 mph, 40, 30, 20. There are even temporary speed limits -those on motorways are still enforced.

It doesn't matter whether speed limits are long-standing, temporary or recent -if you break them, you take the blame.

Yet lots of people do break the limits, to the extent that if you drive round Bristol at 30 mph drivers behind you start to get impatient and then frantic. Drive down the end of the M32, where it's become 30 mph -you'd have a bus go into the back of you.  And as for the M5 to Birmingham: 85 is the minimum speed in the fast lane.

The defacto speed limits of much of S Gloucs and Bristol are higher than what's legal -the reason people drive at those speeds is because they get away with it. Which is why there's so much hate of speed cameras. Everyone views it as their right to drive at 85 mph down a motorway,  35 in town. Speed cameras don't catch one or two speeders -they force the speed limit down by 15 mph.

But speed camera or police camera: driver is always guilty.

Now, what about Autonomous Cars?

If they can be configured to break the speed limit, if there is some "break the law" button, what would that mean? That drivers have the option of telling the car to break the law -and if so, they are liable? But even building such a feature in means the car manufacturer wink-wink providing an overtake option "to use in emergency" -exactly the same way they hint about how cars can drive at 130 mph "in Germany".

The alternative: you can't speed in autonomous mode, you have to go manual -how is that handled? Does the a-car log this fact and speed? They'd have to: because if the car got caught speeding in manual mode, then the fact it wasn't in autonomous mode is something that'd be used by the car manufacturer as a defence.

But what if the car broke the speed limit in autonomous mode? If you are driving there is no excuse for doing so -and you take the hit: points and penalties. What happens in automatic mode? Does Ford or Google take a hit? Does the driver who was reading email get blamed for the actions of their car?

And how does the car know the speed limits?

Drivers have the road and its signed, but a-cars are going to have to rely on digital maps with speed-limit data on it. How often are those maps going to be refreshed? When a new 20 mph zone is rolled out, can a-cars break the limit until they get an update? And who is at fault then? Is it an "oh well never mind" problem? Is the fault of the driver? The map updaters? Or even the council? After all, today's GPS units have a big disclaimer "don't rely on this" -which is precisely what autonomous cars plan to do.

It gets better thought: in france the speed limits on autoroutes changes depending on weather -that's officially, not just "Slow down in the rain" hints.

Nominally then, an automatic car could break the speed limit in france even if the map was up to date -because it wasn't aware of the weather.

These all sound theoretical questions -but if they don't get answered the likely outcome will be "if an autonomous car breaks the speed limit -never mind". That will be especially in the case in changed limits, permanent or temporary. While drivers could get penalised, the fact that autonomous cars break the limits until the maps are updated is something that could become accepted as inevitable.

No doubt car manufacturers will also be pushing for higher limits for a-cars on motorways, say, 85 mph in dedicate lanes. Which is what they will know they have to in order to preserve the defacto 85 mph limit, to sell autonomous driving on motorways.

Yet from a road safety perspective, this question, who takes the blame when an autonomous car breaks the speed limit, is critical.

Because the answer to that will shape the answer to the next question: if an autonomous car kills someone: who takes the blame?

A wanker driving an white e-van is still a wanker

In the Empire of the Car, pollution is one thing that threatens the car companies -as it puts them on a par with tobacco companies, and lines them up for being banned from cities. If that happens, a key feature of the motor car "you need it to get around" goes up in flames. They would lose the cities and be left with the long journeys. And as only a fraction of journeys are the long ones, there'd be a lot less cars on the road.  No school running parents, no bored commuters on the M32 -and no people buying cars and having them serviced.

This is why e-vehicles get so much hype. The car industry can't be so fucking naive to realise that it addresses all the problems of cars and how they are destroying our cities -but they can promise it, to say "we do care, things will be better -now go and buy that Urban SUV for the school run because your last car is five years old and doesn't have an ipod socket or reversing camera." They can go to the politicians and say "we can solve the cities' problems, give us: money, per-car subsidy, C-zone exemption, car-tax exemption, free parking, the right to drive down bus-lanes, free charging points, and so on. The politicans may so fucking naive that they do believe this -they certainly give out more fucking cash per e-car than you get on a bike to work scheme, and they so love to turn up at the car factories in Swindon, Oxford and Newcastle to get their fat faces in the local rags saying "we politicians care about the environment and about jobs in the area -vote for us". Bike to work schemes, custom framebuilders and the like just don't make for these press events -and they don't have the lobbying skills either. Which is why the money goes to e-cars and not fixing our cities.

Which means that the cities will carry on being shit for cycling and walking.




White van wankers are the front line in the war against the cyclist, the ones who hate bicycles and go out of their way to "show them who owns the road", "teach them a lesson" and generally vomit abuse at anyone on a bicycle.

They also park where they fucking like, whether that's a bike lane, bike path, pavement or anywhere else that is close enough to their destination that they don't need to walk.

Does anyone really think that moving to e-vans will make these fuckwits pleasant to share roadspace with? If you do, you're a naive idiot.

They will be just as aggressive, hate bicycles just as much, only now not be able to drive six inches behind your bike over-revving the diesel engine. Maybe also slower off the mark when the lights change. They will still park where they want to, still scream hate, still have passengers who lean out the side window and swear at you (you not had that? Come visit Yate). They will still think a cyclist coming down a contraflow should not be there and swerve over to clip you.

No, a wanker driving a van will become a wanker driving a e-van,

We are at war with 'Imperial Car'

We live in the empire of the car: they are in charge. And behind the car: the car industries. They must feel threatened. What headlines do they fear

• "closed to traffic" -devalues the car
• "congestion charges" -increases cost of use
• "traffic jams expected" -destroys value of car
• "EU pollution limits" -shows cost of motoring
• "Car crash kills family of five" -shows cost of motoring and doesn't reduce the blame like "cyclist dies in road accident -not wearing helmet".
• "Oil prices to rise"
• "Fuel duties to increase"

These threaten their livelihood -a livelihood that depends on people not just buying a new car every few years, but paying a premium over "car that gets you there" for "car as visible display of status". They have to show value in owning a car, and reinforce that cars are not merely something everyone needs -but something to show of one's status in modern society.

The People's Cycling front hereby declares war on Imperial Car makes a list of threats to these invaders  of our city!

• Direct cost of motoring. Congestion and Parking fees connect drivers directly with the costs; fuel less so but still tangibly. Electric motoring with quarterly bills would be even better.
• Opposition to the societal costs of motoring. Death of cyclists and pedestrians, pollution in cities, the destruction of our city centres, death of the high-street. Anything that forces cars to slow down destroys its selling point "speed", restricting access kills its key function "gets you there fast".
• Congestion. So fucking ironic: cars create their own downfall in congestion and parking problems, problems that parking fees and congestion charges are used to mitigate.
• Demographics. Cars lived off the baby boom, consumerism and the movement to the suburbs -places where every adult needs a car. Falling populations in western countries and a return to the city cores threatens this.
• Cultural shifts. Cars go out of fashion. Not status symbols, no more than a bus is. The big risk here is that the (shrinking) youth prefer to be online with their friends over phones than stuck in traffic jams.

We the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire shall fight the invaders! We shall look at all these issues in turn and show how the Empire of the Car is threatened -and what are they doing to fight back.

Before then, look at how they are denying the truth. Here's Audi's "ugly ducking" video



Look at the old footage -villages you can walk around in. People. It would be nice to walk round there, to go to local shops.

Consider what Audi want to sell their customers. A countryside empty of people, animals and bicycles. The car is portrayed as driverless, as it speeds down empty roads -roads that never get seen outside car adverts. Inside the car, in the blue glow of the audi interiors (VW/Audi Group like their blue dashboards), the driver -a man, obviously- warms his oversized buttocks on the heated leather seats. He speaks to his wife on the iPhone via the speaker system, tell her and the family not to wait up as a financial crisis has occurred and he is essential to society because he has to fix it. Then he phones up his (french, naturally) mistress, says the satnav says he'll be there in six minutes, so get the champagne out the fringe and the kimono on.

That is what Audi are selling. Status -and a world that doesn't fucking exist. Yet they promise it, they say "buy our overpriced toy and you can have it". You can't, it's bollocks. Not even your own wife wants to bed you, your kids are bored with your work stories, your colleagues think you are a wanker who can't stop talking about cars, even though carbon road bikes are bling toy of the month. Even you worry about the fact that you aren't getting enough exercise -as is your doctor.

Buying a new Audi will not fix the problems in your life -it will just make you poorer. And it will make society itself poorer, which is where the rest of us have to give a fuck.

Over the next month or two, expect more coverage on these threats -and how to use them.

For now, consider this: the amount of money spent on cycling -all of it- is a fraction of the money spent on car advertising alone. One fucking US Superbowl advert costs $3.5M, enough to put in a decent segregated cycle path in a city where neither TfL or S Gloucs traffic planning department had any influence. Who was prepared to spend that much money? General Motors, in an advert showing how buying a car was the right thing for all patriotic Americans.

In all those adverts -not a single fucking bicycle. Even the pedestrians know their place and keep out of the way of cars. This is where the real motorist training budget goes -not on bluewash from the DfT, but on Imperial Car propaganda saying your life would be better if all the bicycles got out of the fucking way.