Rapid pace of advancement in the automotive industry

The pace of advancement in car technology has been absolutely breathtaking.

BHPian Pacifica recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I learnt to drive in the mid-nineties. My father taught me to drive in our trusty old Ambassador. It guzzled petrol, had a manual transmission, no safety features - or any modern features - and the only good things about it were that it was a comfortable ride and it could be easily repaired anywhere.

Last week, I happened to try out the new Chevrolet Bolt EUV electric hatchback/pseudo-crossover. While electric cars have been written about elsewhere, this car had one feature that really astonished me - Super Cruise. This is sort of like Tesla's Auto Pilot and essentially drives the car on its own. All the driver needs to do is keep his/her eyes on the road (no need to even have hands on the steering wheel) and the car does everything else - steering, braking, accelerating, etc.

It just struck me that in the short space of 25-odd years we've gone from these dinosaurs to these absolutely futuristic nearly self-driving cars. The pace of advancement in car technology has been absolutely breathtaking.

Maybe the long-sought-after flying car will become a reality in our lifetimes after all!

Here's what GTO had to say on the matter:

Forget 20 years, I would say that in the last 10 years, the auto industry has seen more technological / landscape changes than in the past 50. Electric cars, self-driving cars, a fast charging infrastructure, hydrogen fuel-cell tech, app-based fast & reliable transportation like Uber, flying cars...the game has changed. What's more, the barriers to entry are becoming lower. In the last 5 years, we have seen more new entrants to the auto industry (in India & globally) than in the past 50 years.

These are very interesting times. Some technologies will succeed, some will fail. A few companies will succeed, 99% of the new entrants will fail. The one standout car company of our generation though has been Tesla! It has forced a massive, complacent industry to shift to electric cars. Musk & Tesla are the Jobs & Apple of the car industry, in that they completely forced a different kind of thinking by changing customer preferences toward a new technology. Before Tesla, electric cars were slow, boring and merely made for "compliance" or PR reasons. Sergio Marchionne famously told customers not to buy the electric Fiat 500 because he was losing so much money on it.

Fast & aggressive companies like Mercedes & VW are adapting. The slow behemoths like Honda are being left behind. Closer to home, Maruti got so petrified with the evolving landscape (and its lack of technology) that Suzuki begged & pleaded for a marriage with Toyota. India is the only reason the Big T got engaged to Suzuki.

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