Predictions
 

This is not "tech" but is clearly related to our tech-lives as fossil fuel Porsche lovers. Is not my predictions, rather a friend shared this with me---thought it worth posting. Origin (credit to) is unknown.

Predictions:

1. Auto repair shops go away. A gasoline engine has 20,000 individual parts. An electrical engine has 20. Electric cars are sold with lifetime guarantees and are only repaired by dealers. It takes only 10 minutes to remove and replace an electric engine. Faulty electric engines are not repaired in the dealership but are sent to a regional repair shop that repairs them with robots. Essentially, if your electric "Check Motor" light comes on, you simply drive up to what looks like a car wash. Your car is towed through while you have a cup of coffee and out comes your car with a new engine.

2. Gas stations go away. Parking meters are replaced by meters that dispense electricity. All companies install electrical recharging stations.

--- All major auto manufacturers have already designated 5-6 billion dollars each to start building new plants that only build electric cars.


3. A baby of today will only see personal cars in museums.

4. Coal industries go away. Oil companies go away. Drilling for oil stops.

5. Homes produce and store more electrical energy during the day and then they use and will sell it back to the grid. The grid stores it and dispenses it to industries that are high electricity users.

6. Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

--- In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 5-10 years and, most people won't see it coming. (Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on film again? Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore 's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a time, before it became way superior and became mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen again (but much faster) with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.

--- Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, yet they are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

--- Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

7. Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.


--- In the U.S., young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM's Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So, if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, only omniscient specialists will remain.

--- Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, its 4 times more accurate than human nurses.

--- Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

8. Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. The very young children of today will never get a driver's license and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

--- 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 60,000 mi (100,000 km), with autonomous driving that will drop to 1 accident in 6 million miles (10 million km). That will save a million lives worldwide each year.

9. Most car companies will bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels

--- Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi are completely terrified of Tesla

10. Insurance companies will have massive trouble because, without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

11. Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood..

12. Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity.

13. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.

--- Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that simply cannot continue… technology will take care of that strategy.

14. With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter (@ 0..25 cents). We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost

15. Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medical analysis, nearly for free.

16. 3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster All major shoe companies have already started 3D printing shoes.

--- Some spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.

17. At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home.

18. In China, they already 3D printed and built a complete 6-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3D printed.

19. Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, first ask yourself: "In the future, do I think we will have that?" And, if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner? If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea. Any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.

20. Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a short time.

21. Agriculture: There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all day on their fields.

22. Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don't need that space anymore.

23. There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

Interesting points that may certainly be in our future, but this post should probably move to the off -topic forum. The only consistency is change.

Here in the OT forum these topics have been discussed ad nauseum. But always interesting!

10 minutes to change an electric motor. Yea, right. And I and do a valve adjustment on my 911 in 20 minutes, sure that the ticket.

Porsche and Mercedes and likely all the other car manufacturers have heavy R&D budgets and will release an electric car soon. They will not have the BILLIONS of tax dollars Tesla was given but the Germans are pretty good at it. I can't wait to see the new all Electric Porsche and how it compaires head to head with the Tesla. I will NOT be a customer, but the R&D budget of Mercedes and the VW group (VW, Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, and the rest) will not be insignificant. I bet Tesla is worried big time about them.

Even today you can find repair shops for antique mechanical clocks. The clocks are all 100+ years old and professionals repair them. The American business spirit will always have a business to solve an issue. They will not be cheap, but available.

Just a couple questions:

1. Compared to today, do you think cars will not have issues with electric window regulators or ABS wheel speed sensors, worn out control arms, brake linings, general electrical issues? You take away the combustion engine and there are still about 30 other systems that have vulnerabilities/repair needs. We do like our creature comforts!

2. As far as profit, how has Tesla done the last 3 years?

3. Will cobalt prices and supplies have any impact on electric cars?

Some interesting things to think about though. I have seen some videos of General Electrics 3d printers for their jet engine and aviation departments. Its mind blowing!
I also agree with water. It literally doesn't go away. It just moves from one part of the earth to another over and over.

I love the idea of solar taking over. I really feel like its completely untapped.

I always imagine the great creator looking down at us and shaking his head. "What happened to all of the animals? You did what! You killed and ATE them???"....."And did you figure out how much energy that big golden bright thing that comes up every single day provides you? How did you use it? You mostly use it to darken your skin??! You didn't use it to power every single device that exists?! It provides 17,400,000,000,000,000,000 watts of energy to just your planet on a daily basis and you didn't use it?!"

Some reliable predictions but Uber is losing money right now. How long can they go on doing that?

--- Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, yet they are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

https://www.salon.com/2018/01/14/losing-money-rapidly-how-long-can-uber-last/

“We are a technology company, not a transportation or taxi company. So we don't have to follow taxi laws.”

One real big issue is that places like China, India & Asia will be devastated because of their massive populations.
Most of their manufacturing jobs that employ the masses will soon be gone.
No doubt The West will also suffer but smaller countries will suffer the most.... Makes you wonder who will be buying these wonderful new smart products?

But change is coming. I see it everyday in my job & I've lost count of how many people I know who are no loner around.

So what can you do? I'm 53 soon and right now my company just finished laying off lots of people.
There's another cull scheduled for March/April that will see further redundancies.
I care but there's nothing I can do about it. A guy I worked with for over 18 years took his package with a smile. What else could he do?

Meanwhile our politicians talk about enterprise bargaining and changing the labor laws to entice jobs back to Australia. Good luck with that.

This is how farming insects was depicted in the recent Blade runner movie. Yummy!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1517928176.jpg

There is little doubt fresh clean drinking water will be harder to come by in many areas. Southern California and parts of Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma & Arizona are great farm areas, ONLY because we are pumping massive volumes of ground water that can't continue at the same rate. Southern California is a desert! The coast is great, but vast areas are natural desert with little rain. It is the bread basket of the country because the water is pumped up and the constant sunshine.

I don't know what the answer to lack of rain. Even with unlimited electricity from some magic 100% efficient solar cells we will have real issues finding a source of enough fresh water to continue at the current rate.

"Autonomous cars" --- How freaking boring. :(

I'll keep driving my 78 SC as long as I can!

Hey, if it makes you feel good and it makes the voices in your head happy, it run with it!
Don't let facts get in the way.

Technically, only part of Southern California is a desert.
That part is what we call the Mojave desert.

The part that includes Los Angeles, Orange county, and San Diego is not classified as desert.

The average annual rainfall for Los Angeles is 14.75"
Total Seasonal Rainfall 1877-Present for Downtown Los Angeles, California

OK, just outside one definition of desert. San Diego to LA and beyond is a very dry area. Look at the hills that are not watered. I really enjoyed my time in Monterey, CA and surrounding area. Laguna Secca is great, but the scenery is dead is brown grey desert.

Drive a track like Roebling Road in GA or Hallett in Oklahoma and you see trees and green everywhere. It is 100+ degrees in the summer instead of 65 so lots more sweat, but they sure look prettier because they get rain.

I don't know where to start. How about a couple.

A gasoline engine does not have 20,000 individual parts
A baby today wiil see millions of personal cars on the road. The babies baby wiil see millions of personal cars on the road

So when are you selling all of your gas cars and going electric?

Maybe it's a car in general that has 20,000 pieces??

Interesting stuff, but I think widely off the mark in timing regarding the electric and autonomous cars... I think it'll be way more progressive and land softer...

Electric cars have a place but won't work everywhere for a long long time - like far from big cities with less support infrastructure... More solar at home to power your car, yes, I'm already doing that now and it works for me. But all those investments required in support infrastructure are not likely to happen quickly - just look at the state of our current infrastructure - we struggle to maintain what we have and those predictions imply radical upgrades...

All those batteries are made from relatively rare and dirty materials, and don't recycle well, we might need new battery tech that is cleaner before this goes forward - meantime the gas engine gets cleaner and more frugal all the time...

The grid is not ready to deal with a mega influx of daytime solar and redistribute this at night (would need mega storage), or the variations on solar production due to weather, or rely on clean energy for cold snaps.. most grids are not all that interconnected from location to location, let alone from state to state... Hell the grid needs to be brought into the 20th century before we go 21st, and while we're at it let's harden it from hackers a little...

No more coal? There's still a lot of coal plants because they can fire up quicker than others to meet fluctuating energy needs, and the nuclear options which would supply enough power are falling out of favor with the public/politicians (not saying it's a good think, I believe nuclear is the only rational way to meet our electricity needs combined with clean energy).

The driveless cars are not yet ready but when they do, our roads are not ready to accommodate them, there's a lack of political will to even fix our roads and bridges and those things require perfect lanes / lines / cues that are not there... The legal framework is still a mystery as well, if the car kills a pedestrian to save you or vice versa, who gets sued ?

Insurance? They will find a way to get $ from us, trust me... Some of those predictions are valid and interesting but I think overall it won't be as quick as stated. Then again I did not see the car automation develop so fast in the last 3 years either..

No. 20

Then the electrical has more than 20

I find so many of those predictions wrong, I didn't bother reading passed about 2/3 of the list. In some cases that which is predicted will never happen, and other cases it will be years and years after the date predicted.

Whoever wrote that started off with a mistake in every sentence. Clearly the work of someone who has high ideals but little practical knowledge or experience in the real world.

It will be a while before autonomous cars learn to drive in snow, or how to extricate itself from a ditch after sliding off the road.

What are these electric cars made of? How bout solar panels? Plastic. Thats oil.