The end of the automobile revolution

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The end of the automobile revolution

The end of the automobile revolution is upon us — what does this mean for jobs?
The Automobile Revolution

One of the biggest changes facing us is the end of the automobile revolution. Where we are today is in many ways due to the car. The automobile was the job creator of the past. That is about to be over. The social impact will be massive.

The automobile revolution kicked off after the Second World War. It was the foundation of seventy years of global growth and is what created and facilitated our modern consumer society. Automobile production linked (and still links) many different jobs to create, produce, market and support them. A car may be assembled in a factory, but its parts come from countless sub suppliers scattered around the world. Whether it is steel, minerals, plastic, rubber, design, sales and marketing or assembly, testing and racing, lots of people are involved.

We are where we are because of it. The automobile revolution gave us freedom and created jobs. Not just the ones related to manufacturing and other obvious ones, such as truck driver, taxi driver, bus driver and delivery driver, but also a huge host of others. These include non-obvious ones as well, at least until you think about it, such as advertising and parking.

There’s servicing, repairs, insurance, marketing, design, automation, fuel, oil, washing, road creation, rentals, financing, motels, driver’s education, diners, parking, speeding tickets, plus all those TV and print ads. Someone was paid to create them, while others were paid to display them. And the list goes on.

The first thing that people in developing countries do when they start to have money is to buy a car and then that car stimulates all the other related industries.

There were 94 million cars manufactured globally in 2016 and if automobiles were their own country it would be the 6th biggest economy in the world. And that’s without all the other related jobs.

In the US, there are still 1,605,000 jobs producing cars and 213,000 in the UK. A further three times that are indirectly related to the production (dealers and suppliers). That’s a total of over 6 million production related jobs in the US and over 800,000 in the UK. In the EU, it’s 13.8 million people accounting for 6.1% of all jobs. That’s just the manufacturing and distribution bit.

In the US, since 1996 the most common employment in twenty-nine of the fifty states is trucking. There are 3.5mn truckers and another 5.2mn related roles. One in every fifteen people in the US is connected to the trucking industry. It’s a $700 billion gig and that doesn’t include all the related services and the 7.2 million people who support it and derive a living from it.

In the US, there are over 180,000 taxi drivers, 160,000 Uber drivers, 500,000 school bus drivers, and 160,000 transit bus drivers.

Professional drivers account for over 2% of US employment, and then there’s another 3% in supporting roles. Automobiles are a huge job generator.

As we can clearly see, the automobile revolution was central to the jobs’ creation and prosperity of the late 20th century – and still is. We are here because of cars – and tractors, ships, motorcycles, and all the rest.

This type of luxury production helped create mass consumerism, which in turn, fuelled more production. These two feed off each other. Supply creates demand and demand creates supply. The previous seventy years was the age of the Automobile Revolution. What’s next? How do we evolve?

The End of the Automobile Revolution

The days of our economies being driven by the automobile are about to end. Twenty years from now the landscape will be completely different. The reasons are simple – automation, ML (Machine Learning) and AI (Artificial Intelligence). The need for people in the manufacturing process and its associated roles is declining by the day.

First, vehicle manufacturing is becoming increasingly automated; the number of people required to produce more vehicles is continually decreasing. The machines are taking over production.

Second, self-driving will become the norm in the not too distant future. Not just will all those truckers’, taxi drivers’, bus drivers’ and delivery drivers’ jobs disappear, but so will all the jobs related to them – motels, servicing, petrol stations etc. In 2016 a convoy of three semi-automated trucks drove 2,000 miles from Sweden to Rotterdam. The need for drivers of any variety will soon disappear.

Third, demand. Most people will stop owning cars. They’ll rent them. And cars won’t be cars, as we know them now, they’ll be autopods. Some will have chairs, some beds; others will have meeting tables or coffee makers. You’ll rent a small autopod for short journeys, a meeting autopod with a table for meetings, a sleeping autopod for long journeys, a big autopod for parties. It’s already happening with many car-sharing companies popping up. And many young people are not even bothering to get driving licences. A driving licence used to be a rite of passage. You were an adult and had freedom when you passed your test. Now, many young people view it as an unnecessary cost and hassle.

In Japan, car-sharing company Orix noticed a strange phenomenon: 15% of the cars being rented via their app weren’t being driven anywhere. Turns out that people were renting them to take naps, charge tech devices, listen to music, have lunch, watch films, store bags or have quiet conversations. That’s not what cars used to be used for.

The car as we know it is on the cusp of change and the automobile revolution, as the job creator of the 20th century, is about to be over. Not only will jobs and taxes disappear, but also parking fines alone are worth billions to the US and the UK. New York made $545 million in parking fines in 2016 and even Columbus Ohio made $5.2 million. In England, in 2018/19, local councils made a profit of £930 million in parking fees and received a total of £1.746bn from their parking operations between 2018-19. This included £454m from penalties, which is up 6% year-on-year. In London alone that was an average of £1 million a day in fees.

Currently cars spend 95% of their time parked. We’ll have fewer of them. They’ll be on the move and when they’re parked, they’ll be on private property. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Think of all the knock-on effects. Jobs lost to automation in factories and services. What’s going to replace this taxable income and how are all the people previously employed in automobile related industries, factories, warehouses and service jobs, going to make ends meet? How are they going to contribute to the economy?

What are we to do?

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https://fortune.com/2016/03/13/cars-p...