Self-Driving RVs, Not Cars, Will Bring About the True Paradigm Shift (2016)
blog.gadflyllc.com
blog.gadflyllc.com
The photos in the article are of RVs that cost $100k+ (for the little class B) and $175k+ (for the big diesel pusher class A). People who spend $60k+ on a luxury auto may not blink at that, but I doubt it's gonna be a mainstream thing. It's a high margin industry, but even if we assume it becomes much more widespread and competition increases and margins come down, it's still just really expensive to put a whole apartment in a van/bus.
Also, RVs are a tremendous amount of labor to own even if you don't do the driving. They need a lot more maintenance (if you're barreling down the highway in your living room at 70MPH, shit's gonna break), maintenance is a lot more expensive, and you have to deal with dumping and refilling tanks, among other things. I just don't think everyone is going to want that as part of their normal daily commute.
My sister's family tried renting an RV for trips, rather than flying for a while (because their son liked my motorhome and wanted to try out that kind of travel), but decided not to buy an RV and went back to flying or traveling in their SUV and staying in hotels along the way when they wanted a road trip. As with the boat they bought on a whim, it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth to them.
I live in an RV and travel kinda full-time, and have done so for ~6 of the past ~8 years, so I totally understand the appeal. I love having my whole house with me when I travel, sleeping in my own bed every night, cooking in my familiar kitchen, etc., but I can see how it's not for everyone. And, again, the cost is prohibitive for a lot of people. If you live in the RV full-time and don't have rent or a mortgage payment, it's entirely do-able on a modest income...but, in addition to a primary residence, it's a pricey endeavor, really only within reach of pretty wealthy people.
The article applies perfectly well to a ~$30k Sprinter or similar van outfitted with queen bed, sink, stove, tv, etc. There is no reason it will cost significantly more than a Model 3 does now.
It makes perfect sense to be able to sleep/eat/cook/wash/read/watch TV whenever the vehicle is moving, once you don't need to drive.
She's been to 27 countries and 100s of cities, villages and towns....yes, 100s.
From Chernobyl to London, to Southern Greece and Asian side of Turkey... and everything in between.
Now I'm driving my ~$35k Jeep through 30 countries in Africa, should be well over 100k kms.
Have fun out there!
Another major consideration is financing. Obtaining financing for a motorhome is harder than obtaining financing for an automobile, especially if you don't have collateral (like a house).
Back when I first bought an RV, I had good credit and had bought a 350Z partly on credit and paid it off a couple years before I went shopping for a motorhome. I couldn't get a loan...no bank, credit union, or anyone else would loan on a used $60,000 motorhome. So, I paid cash for a $30,000 motorhome, instead. Admittedly this was just after the mortgage crisis and the motorhome industry was among the hardest hit by defaults, and I also had only one year of good income to show (the two years before were right after I'd started my company and was living on savings), but nonetheless, I still would have been able to get an auto loan at that time for the same amount of money (and was told so by my bank credit person).
So, yeah, the RVs pictured are relatively high end (though not extravagantly so), and you can spend a lot less on a used motorhome. The older you buy, the cheaper it will be, but the more maintenance and upkeep you'll have to deal with. Motorhomes do not age well at all.
Again, I understand the appeal of this lifestyle (been doing it for years). And, my RV is an old Avion travel trailer now; much lower priced than the motorhome I was traveling in last time (though I have a big truck to tow it, too, which puts the total price into the same ball park). I know it can be done relatively affordably, but it's not realistic to expect everyone will want to.
And, of course, the requirement that it be autonomous for this "paradigm shift" to happen means that you'll have to buy a new motorhome for at least the first few years of the shift. It'll take five years (after they begin to be widely available, which is likely still five years out) for a healthy used market for autonomous motorhomes to exist.
I've gone from a Class C(Small RV/on truck/van frame) down to a Class B(typical Camper Van).
As you've said large RV's(Class A's) are lots of work, and less affluent people buying a used one, don't realize they're taking a problem off someone's hands. Namely finding a place to park it.
So i'm curious, what would happen if Elon Musk decided to target this industry, thinking it from first principles, how would it look like ?
One of my favorites was when GMC, a real automaker with the ability to dictate the entire design and supply line, made a motorhome. See here for motorhome porn: http://gmcmotorhome.com/
And, it really did require a company that could control the entire thing to make something really innovative. The problem most motorhome makers face is that they all build on the same chassis from existing truck and bus makers. They don't build their own, and can't compete on that metric. So, they get a chassis with an engine and drivetrain from the manufacturer and then build a house on top of it.
GMC was able to lower the floor (with a front wheel drive design based on the Toronado car), and thus the roof, making it more like driving a long van rather than like a moving truck. They routed hot water lines through the engine, so you'd arrive at your destination and have hot water in the tank without need for running the propane water heater. It had an adjustable air bag suspension (like found on high end buses). And, it was all around beautiful to look at and had a high quality interior. But, that was 40 years ago, and the only made them for a few years; I still see them on the road now and then, and I've gotten a tour of a few over the years I've been on the road. I love them, but wouldn't want one, because I don't want to work on the damned thing every weekend just to keep it rolling. But, it's hard to argue that any modern motorhome looks as nice.
The reality is, or was, that GMC never achieved any kind of economies of scale with that experiment. They were so expensive that they didn't sell a lot of them, and RVs have never been mass-produced in the way cars are. Even the GMC was built by carpenters and plumbers in-place as if it were an apartment being built. Which is how RVs are built in Indiana today (most RVs in the US market are built in northern Indiana, and a lot of the parts manufacturers are there, too).
I've frequently considered starting a startup in the industry...but, it's also a really challenging industry. Very subject to economic boom and bust cycles, as many luxury goods are. It's an extremely capital intensive industry. The buyers aren't generally aware of innovation; they're retirees and they buy what the dealer recommends. So, it has all of the hard problems of starting an auto company, with few of the mass market benefits.
I doubt Elon Musk would be interested in doing anything in the space, but I'd love it if someone like that did. There's such a dearth of beauty in the industry. I bought a 34-year-old travel trailer (an Avion) specifically because most new travel trailers are ugly fiberglass boxes. Airstream still makes gorgeous trailers, but they cost as much as a house when purchased new. And, even though my trailer doesn't have a drivetrain to worry about, it's still more work to maintain than I wanted. I regret going with such an old RV and will be moving into something else eventually.
So, margins are high, and there are some big companies that operate in the space (Thor is the largest manufacturer, and owns about a third of the most popular RV brands, including Airstream; Fleetwood is the other big manufacturer; with Winnebago being maybe the biggest brand that isn't part of a large conglomerate). It's not impossible to make money there. But, it seems to be very difficult to innovate due to the capital costs and the priorities of the market. There were huge shake ups in the industry in ~2009, including a bankruptcy for Fleetwood (maybe others). But, as I understand it, the big ones are doing pretty well today.
I could talk for days about RVs. But, realistically, I don't know how to make a business, much less a truly innovative business, there without a tremendous capital outlay.
My elderly parents bought a 38' Bluebird years ago. They used it some in the first couple of years, but then their health problems began preventing them from going anywhere and now it just sits. The thing is a monster, especially when flat-towing a car behind it. Its huge size has gotten them into all kinds of misadventures because it's like driving a semi around, you have to be careful about bridges, grades, road width, parking, where you're going to turn around, and on and on.
I keep trying to get them to sell it, but they are holding on to a dream that will never be. The punchline is that they could have flown anywhere in the world multiple times and stayed in 4-star hotels for what that stupid RV cost and they would have had a much better time.
Anyhow, I just don't see a lot of people relying on self-driving RVs, sorry.
https://archive.org/details/pulpmagazinearchive?and[]=cartoo...
Love the idea though - the problem with roadtripping in a 'camper' is that you waste the day travelling. I looked into staying in a camper in London for a bit when I was commuting there - but you have to go very stealth (if it isn't automatically driving around all night ;))
For instance, it's not true that with losing the personality of horses all cars behaved the same. Why should that change when the driving part is automated? There are so many different needs people try to fulfill with cars. One might want to arrive quickly and electricity efficient. He may prefer something like these lay-back bycicles. Another person wants some recreational time with his family and he will prefer the RV version. Another person simply doesn't have the funds to choose anything but still needs to get from A to B. He may add a request to his Uber app, then a grey little box comes, and on the way to B will put him as much as possible into lines with other box to decrease air resistance, even though that will take more time in the end for the customer.
In my experience more automation will end up providing more options not fewer.
There's a perfect storm of technology and circumstance. Real estate prices are soaring in the cities, solar power is cheap and getting cheaper, more people are able to work off-site via the internet, there's beautiful california land that can be had for thousands of dollars an acre.. the technology that powers water pumps and wells is cheaper and more effective, self driving water/food/garbage collection/road grading/ deliveries will soon be a reality.
I consider myself a loner, often sit alone at times when everyone is out.
I then went to live in the mountains for a while (due to work) sounded great, had internet, a phone, a house 10 times as big with a godly view etc.
However, lonely at home is different from actual loneliness, and I was surprised how much I missed something as simple as seeing a random person walk on the street or a simple child shouting.
You cannot fathom this type of loneliness, unless you actually been in isolation for a while, it changes you.
I think you can substitute most if not all social needs if you have a family, but the paradox is, that people who grew up lonely, more often than not want to live in the city, or at least a place with a certain size off community.
So you either move back "for the kids", or (as you see so often) kids leave for the city as soon as they turn adult. Leaving you alone again.
This is not so much opinion, as it is the nature of the human social mind.
Anecdotally;
One of my friends grew up with a brother and a sister in the mountains. Their parents moved there from the city before they were born, exactly for the dream scenario off living that way. Now they are adults and he now lives in Madrid, his brother in Toronto, his sister in Amsterdam.
Hows that for contrast?
tldr;
Grass is always greener on the other side. Isolation is experienced by many as a golden cage.
I just interpreted off-the-grid not just by it's mechanical definition, but also conceptually.
I can't wait for a future where you can just set a destination (possibly random), go to sleep, and then wake up to a different view each day: http://i.imgur.com/9T7NuhJ.jpg
I don't care how many fancy screens you have, one person on watch with a pair of binoculars should have spotted a bloody oil tanker.
then lets throw in reliability. there is so much more to break and none of it cheap to fix as outside of appliances most of it is unique to the manufacturer.
Class A (the big boys) are also a whole different world than B and C which are based on vehicles which have crash test regulation and protection. Class A and many Class C are sub 10 miles per gallon.
self driving long distance trucking is where its at. companies can absorb the cost much easier than individuals. as for the comment about liability, yeah I don't expect level 5 any time soon and even level 4 as an option.
Self-driving cars are going to bring the cost of a trip way down and when the cost of something drops, we tend to use more of it. Rather than a big shared fleet, I suspect people will continue to buy their own cars and will in fact own more of them because (eventually) they will be much less expensive than current vehicles.
People already spend far more on their cars than they really have to and I doubt that will change.
On the plus side, I think the inexpensive cars of the near future will probably be small and electric with a much smaller operational carbon footprint. On the down side, when you have a robot chauffeur, the value of proximity drops and so I think they will fuel sprawl like nothing else before.
I guess I'm saying I have no idea what's going to happen, but I doubt it will fulfill the Polyanna prophesies that I sometimes read about.
Currently there is no fielded system to enable trucks pulling doubles to back those doubles easily (cutting brakes would be enough, the hardware is already there).
Currently major truck rental fleet operators like Uhaul and Budget do not buy vehicles that make it very hard for people who have no business driving a truck that side to do things like knock over light posts by taking a turn too tight.
Even if the technology exists it's not at the cost/benefit point where it's worth adopting for most use cases.
Is it realistic to have a large, economically viable, electric RV with reasonable performance and a decent range? That's going to need a huge, expensive battery, surely?
Once the fuel hits $20+/gallon there won't be any need to ban ICEs, they will push themselves out.
If demand is low it's not worth taxing (either for the money or just to punish people for using it). It will just be harder to get.
The countries that could soak up so much fuel as to raise global prices like that (China, India, etc) are also the ones where just making ICEs illegal is more politically possible and have the biggest local environmental incentives to do so.
But I remember reading that Elon Musk decided against electric trucks because the numbers just wouldn't work out. But maybe that had to do with the much higher weight of a loaded truck, whereas a camper is more similar to a really large car.