The European Union wants to ban the production of cars with internal combustion engines by 2035. Do you think it is a question of ecology or business with electric cars?
It’s a business question. Internal combustion cars will no longer be sold at that time. It’s the same as with push-button telephones or classic televisions. When LCD TVs came on the market, they cost a million crowns. And today it costs ten thousand or less. I often hear the argument why the European Union pushes electric cars in this way and why it is politically influenced that the hand of the market itself would influence it. The answer is very simple. The European Union is relatively dependent on the car industry. Let’s look at something called an innovator’s dilemma. The current automotive industry would never switch to electric cars on its own, as it is a very costly transition for it. Unfortunately, joint-stock companies today focus mainly on quarterly results, and few companies follow the long term.
And how will shareholders view these forced losses?
In today’s world, the long-term outlook for short-term gains is sacrificed. Those companies would never switch to electromobility on their own, because they would know that they would be at a loss, even for a short time. But when the European Union orders it, they can tell their shareholders that they are not to blame, because they are ordered to do so. Shareholders cannot then object. If the European Union had not taken this step, the vast majority of car manufacturers would not exist in a moment. For example, Volkswagen is currently the most indebted company in the world. They put about 35 billion euros into the development of electromobility, and currently they and the carmakers Kia and Hyundai are currently trying to catch up with Tesla. On the contrary, the Japanese still think that hydrogen is coming and they don’t go much into electromobility. And it is beginning to be seen that Japan can miss this train. In the future, Japanese carmakers may not exist.
How do you think the vast majority of car companies would disappear if the EU regulation did not come?
Because all automakers have constantly argued that electromobility doesn’t make sense. A beautiful example was, for example, the EV1 electric car from General Motors, which came in the 1990s. The carmaker buried it itself, and the others used it as proof that electromobility didn’t make sense. However, until Tesla came and started breaking records in sales awards, customer awards and the like. The development of a car takes about three years if we talk about an internal combustion car. In the case of electric cars, the vast majority of things automakers do not have. Since the 1990s, most carmakers have switched to a subcontracting chain. They don’t have the know-how, but most importantly they no longer have people who do development for eighty percent of all car components. For this reason, it is necessary to start development many years in advance. If the EU did not force this shift, carmakers would constantly delay the transition until they were “missed by the train”. Already today, the Tesla Model 3 has higher sales than most classic combustion cars in its segment.
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How will hybrids withstand this issue?
As soon as the prices of full electric cars fall so much that it will be comparable to an internal combustion engine, the hybrids will disappear. Suddenly, a hybrid will be more expensive than an electric car, which is logical because there will be two technologies instead of one. And it can’t work. As soon as people start switching to electricity, fuel prices will start to rise, which will speed up the transition to electricity. The Czechia has one of the densest networks of petrol stations in the world, we really have petrol stations on every corner. And this is linked to the fact that there are a lot of employed people in the field, who of course do not like the transition to electromobility. The filling station faces the same fate in the future as water refills on the railway.
We are talking about modernizing transport. Is it really progress when you have to wait an hour at the charger?
People today are used to and learned at gas stations. Many companies, especially energy companies, build chargers on gas stations, which is complete nonsense. The charging station should be where you do something. The logic of electromobility is such that wherever you stop, you can charge your car. The forum is that if you really charge whenever you stop, all you need is a standard 230V socket, and you are really everywhere. It is important to realize that every time you leave home in the morning, you always have a “full tank”. So fast chargers are not so much needed, except perhaps for highways, where the charging speed is necessary.
So far, however, electric cars are expensive and charging for fast chargers as well. When do you think there could be a point where electric cars will be available to almost everyone?
Personally, I think that we will reach such a phase by 2025. In my opinion, this will be a turning point, when eighty percent of electric cars and only twenty percent of cars with internal combustion engines will be sold on the new passenger car market. As for charging prices, it must be said that people travel longer to three to three times a year on average. In this case, you charge on quick chargers by the highway, which are of course more expensive, but as a result, operating an electric car is just as cheap, because you charge at home for 50 pennies per kilometer. And that’s what people don’t miss, because they still have the gas in their heads.
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What about autonomous management? It may not be used officially, but Tesla, for example, is proud of it. So isn’t it just a marketing move?
There are several levels of autonomous management, with Tesla at the second level out of five, which is basically a management assistant. Tesla is especially proud of the fact that it can perfectly secure and collect information from its electric cars, thanks to which it gradually creates the right artificial intelligence. She will understand how to drive, only by learning it from the drivers’ rides. If you turn on autonomous steering in Tesla, every time you reach into it and grab the steering wheel, the information immediately travels to Tesla headquarters, where it is then analyzed why it happened, what the driver had to do to get the vehicle running properly. Other carmakers do not collect data for artificial intelligence themselves, but hire companies to do so. Elon Musk has come up with an amazing thing, because every Tesla driver is also a free artificial intelligence instructor.
Would you fully trust autonomous management? Wouldn’t you be afraid that the technique would fail?
The question of autonomous management is generally very tricky, because it is about human lives. At present, however, the vehicle will not even allow you not to drive it at all. It is true that you don’t have to touch it on the highway in normal traffic at all, and it manages this path on its own, except for some narrowings, road work and the like. But of course you can’t fully trust it yet. I still know that I’m the driver who has to watch the road, and if anything happens, I definitely can’t make excuses for Tesla.
How close is Europe to the normal operation of autonomous vehicles?
Well, that’s hard for you. Every year, Elon Musk promises that it will be next year, but he has a slightly distorted view of the whole thing because it works for him personally. But the point is that American roads are different from European ones. So I think that in 2025, at least in the United States, autonomous vehicles will be able to travel from one end of the country to the other. In Europe and everywhere else, it will certainly be later and it will depend a lot on the European Union. However, once this is allowed in the United States, the European Union will not be able to be more than two years late.
You say that autonomous management is easier to implement in America because they have better and clearer roads. At the same time, you say that autonomous governance in Europe should follow about two years after America. Do you think those roads will improve that much in two years?
Technology development follows the “S” curve. Therefore, if the first part takes place in time “X”, then the second part takes place in time “Y”. In general, if autonomous driving is approved in the US, it will have to be at a level where cars will be able to drive virtually everywhere on their own. At the same time, it will most likely be connected with the connection to the “headquarters”, where they will deal with isolated cases. Thus, it will probably not be the highest, namely the fifth level of autonomous management. However, this meant that anything in the US would be put into operation and it would reduce costs (for example, so-called platooning, where the first truck is driven by a driver followed by two more, which are controlled by artificial intelligence), the EU will have to years to allow as well. Otherwise, it would expose EU businesses to disproportionate competitive pressure.
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If autonomous vehicles become commonplace, what will happen to jobs such as taxi drivers or couriers?
I would like to point out that artificial intelligence is now commonly used in America, for example in call centers. All the people working here lose their jobs and will lose their jobs sooner than taxi drivers, couriers or farmers. Thus, paradoxically, artificial intelligence will most often affect white collars, ie the back office. These are mainly people who take some data from somewhere and copy it somewhere. Artificial intelligence can handle this very easily today. On the contrary, a plumber or repairman of anything does not have to worry about artificial intelligence yet. People from the affected professions will have to engage in more creative work in some way, they will have to come up with something, come up with new ideas, or it will turn out that these people will have to pay some rent for sitting at home.
So is artificial intelligence a good way for humanity?
It will be a great challenge that we will not avoid. Our job will have to be to bring some mental value or make fun, art. All other tasks will be solved by machines, which will happen as early as 2030. We will find out whether this was a good journey or not when this phase occurs. From a macroeconomic point of view, the labor market will always be solved, but from a microeconomic point of view, many people will be out of work. In short, you simply do not turn a warehouse into a data warehouse operator.
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| Ondřej Bačina |
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