20 years though? That’s incredibly generous and unlikely imo.
People are refusing to tackle the infrastructure issue of people charging their cars who do not own single family detached homes. It’s a significant population of people for which owning an electric vehicle is a huge inconvenience. Public charging stations exist, but take significantly longer than the 2 minutes it takes to pump gas.
The second big thing is that people simply don’t replace their cars that often. Might be pulling this out of my ass, but I had read recently that the average person replaces their vehicle every 7-12 years…and it is often not with a brand new vehicle. Considering how electric cars still make a very small percentage of those on the road, I can’t see 100% removal of gas vehicles in 20 years in only a few generations of vehicle ownership change.
The Nissan Leaf came out around 15 years ago as the first big name, somewhat popularish electric vehicle. Yet in 2025 electric vehicles are nowhere close to even 50% of vehicles on the road.
In the more distant future? Sure. 20 years ain’t happening tho.
It’s a far different view from this continent. The percentage of EVs is much lower, legacy manufacturers are backtracking on building new EVs, our new fascist regime wants to ban them, and somehow the answer to keeping up with the world is to block it with tariffs. Only like a dozen US states have committed to no new ICE cars after 2035, and that starting to seem very unlikely I’m sure there are already people planning on hoarding dinosaur burners
I just looked up your source. That is of new vehicles sold. While a good start, you’re skipping my latter part about people not replacing their vehicles for a decade. Only 3% of vehicles globally on the road are EVs per the source.
Even wilder than that will be some form of social compromise in fully-autonomous vehicles.
People won’t want to part with the flexibility of driving their own cars, and once things are standardized and safety records are proven, people will eventually find acceptance in automated vehicles.
I hypothesize that major thoroughfares/highways will be fully-automated and only surface streets will be self-driving. This is a sort of hybrid-solution which generally addresses a great deal of traffic issues.
As many people as there are who won’t want to hand over control to the car computer for various reasons, there are A LOT of people who would rather be on their phones than drive (many of whom currently try to do both simultaneously 😬)
There are parallels to when autopilot first began to proliferate in aviation. I’d have to do some research to confirm, but I am certain there was at least a segment of people who would have said they trusted pilots to fly more than autopilot. Now it’s 99% autopilot. The pilots of scheduled air services typically hand control to autopilot fairly shortly after departure, and for quite a long time before arrival. In some cases there are even autopilot-coupled approach to landings… and nobody bats an eye.
We collectively spend millions of hours in traffic, and lose thousands of lives to preventable accidents (like drowsy/sleepy/influenced driving).
Aviation made the switch to save lives, and eventually drivers will, too.
When we look back, we’ll wonder how we were such savages about insisting we drive manually.
I bet at least 50 years after autonomous driving works correctly manual driving will be outlawed and only be done by enthusiasts on dedicated race tracks.
Or maybe not outlawed but most people won’t have a license. Seeing a normal car might be a similar novelty as seeing a horse carriage.
99% agree. We will find it as absurd as considering horse-drawn carriage as a contemporary mode of transport, and while legal overall, their use is prohibited on interstate highways, as will be manually-driven vehicles. And we might not even have to wait 50 years!
Nope, autonomous driving will probably evolve into a drive by wire system, where you drive the computer that drives the car, that means that you are kept in a safety bubble where your inputs are validated to be safe by the computer before they are performed.
Oil has a massive problem, it is just too fucking good at what it does, energy density of a battery is far, far below petrol, and require complex infrastructure at the point of sale, while petrol can even be dispensed without electricity.
Gasoline-only cars, most likely
20 years though? That’s incredibly generous and unlikely imo.
People are refusing to tackle the infrastructure issue of people charging their cars who do not own single family detached homes. It’s a significant population of people for which owning an electric vehicle is a huge inconvenience. Public charging stations exist, but take significantly longer than the 2 minutes it takes to pump gas.
The second big thing is that people simply don’t replace their cars that often. Might be pulling this out of my ass, but I had read recently that the average person replaces their vehicle every 7-12 years…and it is often not with a brand new vehicle. Considering how electric cars still make a very small percentage of those on the road, I can’t see 100% removal of gas vehicles in 20 years in only a few generations of vehicle ownership change.
The Nissan Leaf came out around 15 years ago as the first big name, somewhat popularish electric vehicle. Yet in 2025 electric vehicles are nowhere close to even 50% of vehicles on the road.
In the more distant future? Sure. 20 years ain’t happening tho.
But we’ll see!
I don’t think 17% is “a very small percentage”
And I believe 90% of new cars sold in Norway this year were electric
Remember to discount any stats from the US, they’re always at least a decade behind on everything
It’s a far different view from this continent. The percentage of EVs is much lower, legacy manufacturers are backtracking on building new EVs, our new fascist regime wants to ban them, and somehow the answer to keeping up with the world is to block it with tariffs. Only like a dozen US states have committed to no new ICE cars after 2035, and that starting to seem very unlikely I’m sure there are already people planning on hoarding dinosaur burners
I just looked up your source. That is of new vehicles sold. While a good start, you’re skipping my latter part about people not replacing their vehicles for a decade. Only 3% of vehicles globally on the road are EVs per the source.
Even wilder than that will be some form of social compromise in fully-autonomous vehicles.
People won’t want to part with the flexibility of driving their own cars, and once things are standardized and safety records are proven, people will eventually find acceptance in automated vehicles.
I hypothesize that major thoroughfares/highways will be fully-automated and only surface streets will be self-driving. This is a sort of hybrid-solution which generally addresses a great deal of traffic issues.
As many people as there are who won’t want to hand over control to the car computer for various reasons, there are A LOT of people who would rather be on their phones than drive (many of whom currently try to do both simultaneously 😬)
There are parallels to when autopilot first began to proliferate in aviation. I’d have to do some research to confirm, but I am certain there was at least a segment of people who would have said they trusted pilots to fly more than autopilot. Now it’s 99% autopilot. The pilots of scheduled air services typically hand control to autopilot fairly shortly after departure, and for quite a long time before arrival. In some cases there are even autopilot-coupled approach to landings… and nobody bats an eye.
We collectively spend millions of hours in traffic, and lose thousands of lives to preventable accidents (like drowsy/sleepy/influenced driving).
Aviation made the switch to save lives, and eventually drivers will, too.
When we look back, we’ll wonder how we were such savages about insisting we drive manually.
I bet at least 50 years after autonomous driving works correctly manual driving will be outlawed and only be done by enthusiasts on dedicated race tracks.
Or maybe not outlawed but most people won’t have a license. Seeing a normal car might be a similar novelty as seeing a horse carriage.
99% agree. We will find it as absurd as considering horse-drawn carriage as a contemporary mode of transport, and while legal overall, their use is prohibited on interstate highways, as will be manually-driven vehicles. And we might not even have to wait 50 years!
Nope, autonomous driving will probably evolve into a drive by wire system, where you drive the computer that drives the car, that means that you are kept in a safety bubble where your inputs are validated to be safe by the computer before they are performed.
Similar to that of fighter jets today.
Not in 20 year mate.
Oil has a massive problem, it is just too fucking good at what it does, energy density of a battery is far, far below petrol, and require complex infrastructure at the point of sale, while petrol can even be dispensed without electricity.
Unless something drastic happens, there will be a decent number of cars on the road in 20 years that are already on the road today.