Even Free Self-Driving Would Take a Decade to Reach Your Driveway
Drivers keep cars for 10 to 15 years, so even free self-driving would take years to reach a typical driveway.
Business Breakdowns · Applied Intuition: A Billion Intelligent Machines - [Business Breakdowns, EP.248]New software can reach phones and computers quickly. New intelligence for machines can take years to reach the road, because the machines themselves take years to turn over.
That is the explanation from Peter Ludwig, a co-founder of Applied Intuition, which makes software that helps machines operate on their own and provides tools that other companies use to develop that capability. A chatbot works on phones and computers, he says, because those environments are standardized through browsers, operating systems, app stores, and payment systems, so the intelligence is easy to consume.
A car offers no such shortcut. Ludwig offers an example: suppose you bought a Honda Accord yesterday and self-driving became available free tomorrow. You would still own the Accord. Since more than half of Americans live with fairly small savings, a car is a big purchase, and owners will keep driving it for 10 to 15 years, no matter what else is on the market.
The same delay from slow machine turnover affects other equipment. Putting intelligence into physical machines has to go through manufacturers and through the operators of farms, mines, and other sites, and it has to fit what those buyers can afford.
Safety adds another layer because physical AI involves machines moving in time and space with people, unlike answering a chatbot question.
The slowness is also what makes the business durable once the technology is installed. Ludwig compares it with silicon. Once chips are designed into many machines, they are hard to displace, and he says intelligence built into machines is sticky in the same way, so the barriers that slow adoption become protection afterward.
Questions people ask
Why can't my current car just get a software update to drive itself?
Usually not. Self-driving needs specific sensors, computing power, steering and braking controls, and safety testing for that exact model. A software update can add features to the screen in your car, but it cannot add the eyes, reflexes, and redundancies an older car was never built to carry.
Do trucks, tractors, and mining equipment last even longer than cars?
Often longer than cars. Long-haul trucks, tractors, combines, and mining trucks are expensive capital equipment, built to work for many years and maintained rather than replaced. That is why autonomy in trucking, farming, and mining tends to arrive through new purchases and long fleet turnover, not overnight swaps.
Why does an app reach everyone so much faster?
Phones and laptops share common operating systems, browsers, and app stores, so one program can run almost everywhere. Cars and industrial machines come in thousands of shapes, with different sensors, chips, and controls, and mistakes can injure people, so each installation needs far more testing and customization.