Hot off the presses comes the news that Toyota Motor has just invested one billion dollars in cash into the taxi service Grab. This is a smart move by Toyota, as the new Grab taxis will now undoubtedly come from the family stable.
Toyota is not the first to become involved in the taxi business, as General Motors has invested 500 million dollars in the ride sharing company Lyft. And guess whose cars will be used?
What we are seeing is the death of the motor car as we know it. An autonomous car doesn’t care if it has three cup-holders or four. An autonomous car doesn’t care about feedback through the steering wheel. In fact, the cars of tomorrow won’t even have a steering wheel.
With the revolution in full swing by 2022, will we see this in Thailand? I doubt it very much. I do have a MobilEye installed in my daily driver and it works very well in keeping me in my lane – where the lanes are clearly marked. However, with some of the goat tracks around here, you are lucky to have any lane markings at all.
An old proverb/curse goes, “May you live in interesting times.” Those times are here!
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