by Michael Keane
This post will be covering the effects of driverless cars on the oil, insurance, and government taxing authorities. With Google already logging in over 1 million road miles, and the successes that have been created, these vehicles are not far from hitting the consumer markets. Problems show that it will eliminate demand for oil and insurance industries, while at the same time removing a significant source of revenue from tickets and crashes. Possible solutions include finding new uses and new sources of revenue. Links to the previous 2 articles (general post 1 here, and more focused article for post 2 here).
Most driverless cars will be almost certainly electric vehicles. This is not a good sign for the oil companies. If car companies are going to invest in the technology to have a driverless car, electric engines will be a no brainer.
Insurance companies are almost certain to lose massive revenue from driverless cars. The continually mounting data is showing that driverless cars are far safer than cars driven by human beings. That will hit premiums in a big way. This one simple savings point could drive more people to driverless cars in the same way that gas prices drive consumers to electric vehicles. Knowing the trends and cycles as Insurance companies create the thought pattern that this situation is being worked on and that a plan to replace the premium revenue with another stream is likely.
Not unlike the insurance companies are local and state governments. This is because with the same data, extrapolating the idea that there will be less tickets from speeding and accidents is almost a no brainer. But unlike insurance companies, it can be fairly certain that governments are not working on this idea. Maybe this article will get them to do so. They should be looking at their revenue models (because that is what ticket revenue really is) and adapt it to future items and personal behaviors in order to replace the loss that not having speeding ticket and accident ticket revenues. A possibility is to update roads with assistant type technology for the vehicles and charge the vehicle owners for that particular service.
Driverless cars will create an opportunity for consumers to possibly lessen the costs of insurance, energy, and tickets. These industries would be very wise to have plans on replacing the current revenue with new plans in the pipeline.
