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It's not really off-topic. The point is that new technologies are being introduced at a dizzying rate (some we won't have even thought about) and it will change the way we work, we play, we shop ... even have sex (who would have predicted Tinder 30 years ago?)

This is already happening - I'm writing an article on this very subject at the moment. The pace of change is astonishing. Let's look at a small personal example. In the mid-80s, I lived in London. I didn't have a house with a phone and there were no mobiles so, if you wanted to meet someone...

But it wouldn't just be cheaper - it would be a lot, lot cheaper. I'm talking several years hence; there were about 12,000 hansoms and growlers in London in 1900 - how many do you think were left in 1930? My bet would be a very, very low percentage. Modes of transport has changed over the...

98% of vehicles are taken off urban roads at peak times - there'll be increases in rural traffic and off-peak journeys. But, yes, there'll be a net reduction. But as there's no pay by mile at the moment, any amount is an increase in revenue. The only things I'm confidently predicting is that...

You persist in talking about the future as if it's the same as now. It's a bit like saying that we can't have doctors in the cities because there's not a plentiful supply of leeches. There's absolutely no way we're going to have the same work patterns in 20 years time than we have now. In...

For a start, you're assuming that somewhere will stay "undesirable" permanently. It may well be that your undesirable town is prime real estate. I saw a survey this week that said that Crawley is one of the best places to live in the country - that's a far cry from its reputation when I was...

We shall see but just look at the trends. There was a survey in the US a couple of years ago that showed only a quarter of 16-year-olds had a driving licence (down from half about 20 years previously) ... and that's before the arrival of Uber. And that's in car-orientated US, I imagine the...

I wish I had a fiver for every business that confidently told me 10 to 12 years they would never adopt cloud and now use it. I wouldn't have to work for a while. :lolol: I won't be around to see the full extent of the shift but all the trends are pointing to the death of the private vehicle

I quite confidently predict that by 2050, fewer than 1 percent of the population will own a car. And the number of car owners will be a small minority by 2040, maybe 10 percent.

OK, here's my take on how it could work. Mr or Ms Bizness buys a fleet of self-driving vehicles - let's say a thousand. They cost £60k each so he's spaffed £60m already. The government charges him, say, £20k per year per vehicle. So, the government has already raked in money on the sale of the...

I'm not saying that no-one needs to travel but there will be a lot fewer of them. I do say that very few people (if any) will own a car. Yes, there will be plumbers, sparkies etc who need to travel but they make a small percentage of the workforce. And (this is pure guesswork on my part) there...

I once had a job where I was offered a company car. I don't drive so I turned it down. I did jokingly ask for a company horse but we soon discovered that it was more expensive than the car to run :smile:

But why are they doing that? A hundred years ago most people lived within five miles of where they worked (I suspect that most people lived within a mile of where they worked). What changed was the need to build big factories and offices in city centres but as (G49er has pointed out) many of...

When you're talking about cars, there wasn't the technology in place. To run successful autonomous vehicles, you're talking at least 5G connectivity and probably 6G for any mass market. And there certainly wasn't the intelligence available to drive such a beast accurately - we're talking about...

Not tax but the idea that things will continue as they are indefinitely. The private car will be no more, probably not by 2030 but by 2040. Travelling to work, for most people, will be archaic. The day of the long distance commute is certainly over. You can't take today's situation and project...

This thread really does read like something the manufacturers of horse-drawn carriages would have been having around 1900 :lolol:

By 2030, we'll be well on the road (ha,ha) to autonomous cars. The concept of owning a car will be on the way out (you can be sure that the insurance costs would rocket and I'm sure it would be taxed accordingly too). Once we have self-driving cars, we can have all sorts of road pricing...