The driverless future is here

WE are in the cusp of the most important development since the car was invented and replaced the horse-drawn caretela.

In the next few years not decades, according to scientists, driverless cars will be filling our streets, as the technology to make more powerful batteries are made possible. Driverless cars would dramatically reduce the death tolls in all of the world’s highways.

For the last 100 years or so, consumers of fossil fuel have had no choice but to fill up, despite its fluctuating cost.

The prices of gasoline and diesel have remained almost flat during the last two years. There is glut in supply. The invention of fracking in the United States have made the price of gasoline very competitive.

But the pressures of global warming, graphically shown by the dramatic thawing of Arctic ice, and the trend of a continuously warming planet, tracked by scientists over the years, gave overwhelming evidence to stress the need to shift to alternative sources of clean energy.

Without us being much aware of it, wind turbines and solar panel productions in many industrialized countries have grown by leaps and bounds.

Soon, we may forego the use of gasoline in most of our vehicles, maybe with the exception of airplanes and ships.

Then, demand for gasoline and diesel would drop like a stone and the oil industry as we know it would disappear from the face of the earth.

This is a world-shattering development and we would expect that the oil industry would fight tooth and nail to maintain its foothold as long as it can.

Imagine the number of people all over the world who would be rendered jobless by the disappearance of the oil industry.

Hopefully, the gas industry giants and their millions of adherents will finally accept the demise of gas and oil. There is no choice but to accept the new paradigm.

It took more than 200 years to develop the oil infrastructure, from surveying to drilling, to construction of refineries, and the means of delivery by pipelines and ships into gas stations and finally, into the tanks of cars.