It saddens me to say it, but we are approaching the end of the automotive era.

The auto industry is on an accelerating change curve. For hundreds of years, the horse was the prime mover of humans and for the past 120 years it has been the automobile. Now we are approaching the end of the line for the automobile because travel will be in standardized modules. The end state will be the fully autonomous module with no capability for the driver to exercise command. You will call for it, it will arrive at your location, you’ll get in, input your destination and go to the freeway. (…)

Most of these standardized modules will be purchased and owned by the Ubers and Lyfts and God knows what other companies that will enter the transportation business in the future. (…)

This transition will be largely complete in 20 years.

Bob Lutz, former vice chairman and head of product development at General Motors, on the future of the automotive industry. We have been talking about this for a long time, but it’s impressive to hear it from an industry leader with decades of experience in the field.

Self-driving cars went viral again recently, when Tesla dropped a $2,500 software update on its customers that promised a new “autopilot” feature. The videos are fascinating to watch, mostly because of what’s not happening. There’s one, titled “Tesla Autopilot tried to kill me!” where a guy drives with his hands off the wheel for the first time. He hasn’t replaced driving with, say, watching a movie or relaxing—instead, he’s replaced the stress of driving with something worse. (…)

Somewhere in between where we stand now, annoyed at how much time we waste sitting in traffic, and the future, where we’re driven around by robots, there will be hundreds of new cars. Their success doesn’t simply depend on engineering. The success depends on whether we, the people, understand what some new button in our brand-new car can do. Can we guess how to use it, even if we’ve never used it before? Do we trust it? Getting this right isn’t about getting the technology right—the technology exists, as the Tesla example proved so horribly. The greater challenge lies in making these technologies into something we understand—and want to use.

Great piece about one of the most compelling questions around the advent of self-driving cars: how do we build trust in a machine?

The modern day automobile is not intuitive. Drivers need to learn to operate an automobile. Passengers have to conform to a car’s existing seating arrangement with only marginal modification. Software has the potential to change all of these limitations.

While Tesla has become a pioneer in electric vehicles and BMW continues to slowly build momentum in the space, both companies have not actually altered the automobile’s fundamental purpose.

Great piece by Neil Cybart on how Apple uses design as an asset to marginalize industries.