The privately owned car is dead, now it is the electric, public pod

The driverless, electric Google controlled,
public pod just must be how we get
 about  in the future. The private car is dead.

Privately owned cars, driverless, electric or otherwise, are a problem for a clutch of reasons.

Removing the need for a car to be piloted by a human will not erase, at all, the global carbon dioxide emissions associated with road transport or the infrastructure from which it is supported.

The trouble arises from the fact that motor vehicles are privately owned and so are used only by an individual, or his or her family or those who work for whatever company that owns the vehicle, for transport and so has limited use.

The vehicle, despite its limited use (it’s driven 20km before work, parked all day and then driven home at the end of the day) still consumes an identical amount of energy, resources and space as a car used non-stop, with the difference being the amount of fuel used.

Most privately owned vehicles are grossly inefficient, both in terms of cost and their impact on our environment.

Many people still have ideas and values rooted in the 20^th Century and difficulties arising from climate change, worsened by the fascination we have for a privately owned motor vehicle, demand that we shift, faster than quickly, into this century.

The 20^th Century illustrated to us that technology could resolve any human difficulty and while that became startling obvious in the post-World War Two quarter century, many of us have intellectually remained mired in that golden innovative era.

Well, we have the technology and if we were to apply it today we could create and build a public transit system that would make the privately owned, driverless electric car as about relevant today as the dinosaur

The only thing that stands between us and the creation of a sophisticated, efficient and fast public transit system is our imagination and the desire of corporations for profit.

It is our consumptive behaviour and the intent by corporations in securing profit and growth is another barrier between what exists and a sophisticated and efficient public transit system that can be, and must be, driverless, electric cars that are public and so available to and used by everyone.

A privately owned, and so anarchic car is the real problem.

Read Aisha Dow’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Driverless cars could make Melbourne congestion worse.”