By Doug Cunningham
As GM moves to lay off thousands and close plants to pivot toward an electric and autonomous automotive future, what will that future really look like? Will driving be obsolete? And will Michigan be able to play a profitable role in the automotive future? Doug Cunningham reports.
Bruce Belzowski is Managing Director of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute’s Automotive Futures group. Belzowski says don’t expect full-on autonomous cars to take over for at least another decade.
“The beginnings of the 2020’s you’ll start seeing some autonomous vehicles and they’ll be in what we call geo-fenced areas. They’ll be in very restricted areas but you’ll see the beginnings of it. What this will do is beginning to build trust among consumers about the new technology.”
Belzowski says driving enthusiasts won’t be excited by that and for a time driver’s may share the roads with autonomous vehicles presenting big challenges.
Electric vehicles will arrive in truly large numbers, Belzowski says, by the end of the 2020’s. But since they rely on power plants that are still mostly fossil fuel fired they are not truly zero emission vehicles.
“This is why the current administration’s move to keep those coal fired plants going rather than switching them over to natural gas works to the disadvantage of the environment in the long run. Because these vehicles are going to be powered by these power plants.”
Belzowksi believes Michigan is still in a good position to profit from the auto industry’s future technologies because car companies and they’re R & D are still located here. But the global nature of the industry means Michigan will likely never again be the “center of the universe” for the auto industry.
