THE FUTURE OF DRIVING: Car makers take the wheel
The automobile is being reinvented, along with the way it is used — motor companies are not staying on the sidelines as the world transforms
He’s no killjoy, but Ralph Speth thinks an occasional dose of reality does no harm. The global CEO of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is as excited as anyone about what the future holds for the motor industry. But there’s no point glossing over some of the real challenges that lie ahead. For example, a world of electric vehicles? The UK may have set a 2040 deadline for ridding its roads of petrol and diesel engines but, he asks, will it have the infrastructure and energy capacity to routinely recharge over 30m vehicles? And what of fully autonomous vehicles? London congestion has already reduced average traffic speeds to the pace of 19th century horse-drawn carriages. Speth says driverless vehicles super-sensitive to everything around them would bring the city to a standstill, driven (or not) to distraction by thousands of potential obstacles.The motor industry is undergoing an extraordinary revolution. Indeed, it is arguably being reinvented, as new technologies and fuels force engineers t...
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