Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030: The Disruption of Transportation and the Collapse of the Internal-Combustion Vehicle and Oil Industries (RethinkX Sector Disruption)

This the latest book from "disruption" expert Tony Seba. His essential premise is that new technologies like solar, wind, electric cars and self-driving cars will come on much faster than industry experts predict and will bring devastating changes to the industries affected. This book drills down on the impact of self-driving cars. Essentially your next Uber ride will drive itself. Take this to extremes (or as Tony says, the "logical and inevitable conclusion") and the following occurs:- Electric (EV) cars will be cheaper then internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by 2019 or so.- Solar photovoltaic (PV) cells will progress so far it will make no sense to generate electricity remotely and run wires to people's houses.- Sales of ICE cars will collapse quickly because EV's require virtually no maintenance and are far cheaper to operate.- The demand for oil will drop, leaving many expensive oil extraction technologies "stranded". e.g. No more Canadian tar sands.This book in particular looks at the next step...- By 2021 it will be legal for driverless EV's to drive the roads- Nobody will want to own a car because it's so cheap to summon an electric self-driving car on demand- The number of cars on the road will drop by 80%- New care manufacturers will basically have to build fleet cars for Uber-like entities- Truck drivers, cabbies, etc. will be un-employed, but the rest of us can actually get some work done while sitting in trafficWhether you agree with Tony or not, it's all interesting reading. His predictions about EV pricing/performance and PV cell pricing from 3-4 years ago have proven to be accurate. Look for videos of his lectures on youtube.Unfortunately, this book is poorly formatted with miserable graphics many of which which require you to distinguish between four lines with differing shades of grey. Many Y-axis labels are truncated by careless formatting. Excellent footnotes, no index.

I'd give this 5 stars for the content. My only disagreement is that possibly the time frame Seba expects may be much too short; I expect more like 20 years for these changes, not 10. Time will tell.My complaint with this book is mostly that…well, it's a book. Given the nature of the content, and its rapid change, it might be better delivered as a series of annual reports, or even a blog. If it must be a book, a Kindle version would make more sense. Then, presumably, color would be trivial to provide. Something with so many charts and graphs really should use color.Even for a cheap monochrome printing, chopping off the edges of charts and sidebars is really lame, especially for 2019. And gray print?! What's up with that! Even the bold print is gray. Not a good typeface, either. It's only slightly better than Lucida, bordering on nauseating.But I read it all, and have excitedly strapped myself in for what will surely be a bumpy ride in the next ten years.

Very thought provoking work with immense potential impacts to our society. However, it is a little too clear that the author is cheer leading for his Utopian predictions, and conveniently overlooks a number of flaws.The main premise of the movement to TaaS (ubiquitous Transportation as a Service) are that the economic savings attributable to increasing the asset utilization of the vehicle, will be so compelling that private ownership of vehicles will be abandoned. On the surface this makes sense, however the premise falls apart when considering that most vehicles are used at more or less the same time during rush hour commuting. Without a staggering of work start and stop times, I just don't see the overall capacity of the transportation requirements falling to the degree assumed in the study.Also, similar savings are already available in many cities where public transit is already in place, yet many people still choose to drive their own vehicles.Mentioned all to briefly are the significant supply risks of the rare metals Lithium and especially Cobalt, which is concentrated in "high-conflict" Congo.Finally, the authors' claim that TaaS will lead to an economic boom as a result of the consumer savings amounting to an annual disposable income gain of $1 trillion a year is likely to be eaten up by real estate price gains in the geographic areas where communal ride sharing is economically feasible.After reading this book, I do believe that there will be significant changes to personal transportation, but not to the trans formative degree predicted here.Still, a worthwhile read.

Interesting study on what can be a major disruption on an industry that affects all of usHighly recommend reading

Excellent portrait of the future. It cannot arrive too soon.

A must-read!!

Recommended reading. The future is here.

Amazing. I bought it just to read as I like reading about future technology and trends but if you are an investor it is worth a read.