Michael Haines
Why driverless cars are the death knell for traditional manufacturers
Cars are expensive, and mostly sit idle. They are also risky and usually a pain to drive in traffic. Socially, the cost of accident damage and injury and congestion is in the trillions of dollars world-wide. So why do people buy cars? As a status symbol. For freedom. To express
It’s not just the net that threatens traditional retailing
The Wall Street Journal’s business editor Dennis Bergman argued recently that ‘local’ retailers (and by implication ‘local’ manufacturers) are at risk from on-line sales direct from Chinese Manufacturer. Maybe so, but perhaps this is not the greatest long term (10-20 years) threat to ‘traditional’ (bricks and clicks) retailing and manufacturing. And if
Driverless cars, lawyers and the adjustable ethics switch – will we have to choose who to kill?
As car manufacturers start planning for driverless cars they want liability to reside with the owner – unlike Google which has taken a different tack. Welcome tot the world of adjustable ethics settings. That’s right, you get to choose who to kill. Patrick Linhas recently posted a piece in Wired
What’s Google’s dinky new driverless car got to do with manufacturing?
Google’s new driverless car is so dinky and limited to 40 kph — who would want to buy it? My guess is, not many people. But that’s not the point. The real question is: who would use it to take them from A to B on demand? My guess is
New mobility report misses the main opportunity for manufacturing
The recent IBM report called “Advancing Mobility: the new frontier of smarter transportation” is a useful overview of the state of the mobility industry. But it makes a fatal assertion: “Remember that the primary function of automotive companies is to make vehicles.” This assumption may well sink any broad-based car