In Ernest Hemingway’s novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” one of the main characters is asked how he went bankrupt.
His response: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Slowly at first, then all at once.
This is how waves of technology happen.
They build slowly, then suddenly they’re everywhere.
Take the internet. In the ’90s, we slowly downloaded AOL CDs onto our PCs. Then suddenly, the internet was everywhere.
In the 2000s, people slowly started using smartphones. Now you can’t leave your home without one!
Bitcoin was slowly adopted by cypherpunks looking for an alternative to fiat. Now institutional managers are adding it to their portfolio.
Artificial intelligence has been in development for decades. When ChatGPT arrived, there were 100 million people using it in a few months!
As a tech investor, I am always looking for the moment when something is at a tipping point. That moment when it’s about to go from gradually to suddenly.
And there is one particular technological breakthrough that’s on the cusp of going mainstream…
6 Reasons for Autonomous Transportation
Five years ago, I predicted that autonomous transportation would be one of the biggest game changers of the 21st century.
Back then, I listed six key reasons why it would be so impactful:
- Transform the transportation industry. Autonomous driving will disrupt the foundations of the $7.3 trillion global transportation industry. In the same way that Amazon disrupted retail and Apple disrupted communication.
- Free up almost an hour of your day. Once this futuristic vision becomes reality, autonomous transportation will liberate daily commuters. And soccer moms will be free from endless afternoons of carpool drudgery. It will cut 128 million Americans’ workdays shorter. Many suffer an average daily commute time of 52 minutes.
- Grow the logistics industry. The $11 trillion global logistics industry will be automated by cutting out the cost of human drivers and increasing transport times. McKinsey estimates that autonomous trucks could reduce operating costs by 45%, saving the U.S. trucking industry between $85 billion and $125 billion annually.
- Drastically cut down on car accidents. Motor vehicle accidents will be a thing of the past. Every car on the road will be automated and know exactly what every other car is doing. Self-driving maker Cruise estimated that its cars were 73% less likely to be in a crash with a risk of a serious injury and 93% less likely to be the primary contributor to a crash.
- Spur a real estate and roadways boom. Hard-to-reach areas will become more accessible, which could create a new real estate boom. Cheap transportation will likely lead to another “urban sprawl,” as we saw in the ‘50s and ‘60s after the major roadways were constructed.
- Transform the way we vacation. Imagine loading the family up into a self-driving van on a Friday night in a New Jersey suburb and waking up to the sunrise on Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
Overall, the transportation industry is about to go through its biggest revolution since the automobile replaced the horse and buggy.
This is a mega trend that has grown gradually but is about to happen suddenly.
Now, those predictions are coming to fruition.
A few weeks ago, Barron’s noted that “Robotaxis are closer than some investors might expect.”
I predict that October 10, 2024, will go down in history as the dawn of the robotaxi.
That’s the date Elon Musk will reveal his long awaited robotaxi. He’s already on the record claiming this breakthrough vehicle will be fully autonomous without a steering wheel or pedals.
Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) is also said to be revealing a brand new ride-hailing app that can summon its robotaxis.
In our June issue of Strategic Fortunes, I recommended buying into Tesla ahead of the robotaxi buzz.
I noted that the big benefit of Tesla’s new $99 monthly FSD subscription was that it would grow Tesla’s dataset exponentially. Tesla collects this data in order to train its vehicles on the roads. The more data it collects, the better the robotaxi training model.
Tesla was accumulating data gradually at first. Suddenly, with the new pricing plan, here comes exponential growth in real-world data.
That’s why I expect October 10 to be a day when self-driving goes from “slowly at first” to “all at once.”
But Tesla isn’t the only company vying for the self-driving title.
In August, GM’s self-driving unit Cruise and Uber signed a “multi-year strategic partnership to bring Cruise autonomous vehicles to the Uber platform.”
They also announced riders would be able to hail driverless vehicles in certain jurisdictions as soon as 2025.
Of course, tech giant Google also has its hat in the ring. That company announced in August that its self-driving unit Waymo had reached 100,000 autonomous taxi rides a week!
Right now, Waymo is only operating in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix with plans to expand into Austin.
With the robotaxi revolution just weeks away, we’d love to hear from you!
Have you taken a self-driving tax yet? Would you?
Until next time,
Ian King
Editor, Strategic Fortunes
